Power Fantasy

by Scottie Futch

  His body status at the time of his save was always recorded, so injuries could easily persist if his adventure was saved while he was injured. He rarely had more than a few bumps and bruises recorded in such a way before, so this was most unwelcome news.

  Scott now faced a significant decision. Did he return to the apocalypse, or did he head to Nowhere?

  If he could find healing items, he could finish recuperating. However, that would come at the cost of possibly another thousand item points if not more.

  The trip to Nowhere would leave him vulnerable. His injuries were still significant, so he would not be able to do much physical attribute training. The boost to all his attributes certainly helped the situation, but he knew that he could do more if he were fully healed.

  These thoughts led him to consider that perhaps stat training was not the only thing to do there. He had several skills to pursue that did not require him to perform a great deal of heavy manual labor. Training them could be a better use of his time than trying to upgrade his attributes.

  It was a tough call. Earning items points would be easy if he was given free reign to itemize to his heart’s content. Games being what they were, it was a sure bet that the time he had remaining in his mission to Nowhere was an indicator of when those critters mentioned in that old journal would start their migration. He needed to be able to make the absolute most out of his time there prior to that. There was no way to know what might happen.

  “I need to be more careful in the future. If I keep being this reckless, I’ll definitely end up stuck in a permanent death loop,” he said quietly. “The flying spaghetti monster, or whoever is actually behind all of this, doesn’t seem too invested.”

  He had been given a system and a means to exploit it, but what he did with it seemed to be completely up to him. Whether he lived a fun carefree life with dozens of beautiful waifus, or ended up in his own personal hell, the choice and power to exercise that choice was entirely his own prerogative.

  Scott was a man unfettered by fate whose mortality had been removed. He was not destined for some arbitrary heaven, hell, or reincarnation. He was free to become whoever he chose to be. The system, however, did not care if his choices led to him becoming an eternal undying vegetable.

  In the end, he chose to return to the apocalypse. Were it not for the time limit, Nowhere would have been the better option. Using up the precious time for that world, to heal his now manageable injuries wasn’t worth it.

  Scott awoke with a yawn then winced as the pain of his injuries returned. In the white room he felt no pain, but here the painkillers had long since worn off.

  He rolled over onto his side and noticed Summer was leaning back against the bed fast asleep.

  “You… Are far too good for me,” he said softly. It was obvious that she had stayed near him all night.

  Surprisingly, there was another body nearby in a chair. Saiko had slept there with her sword in her hand.

  “These girls…” he whispered. Before now he had wanted to help them in their situation and possibly get them to be his waifus. Now there was something else there. He was not certain what to call it, but they were deeply important to him.

  Stiff for reasons that did not involve sexual arousal, he quietly slid out of bed then slowly staggered out of the room. Every part of his body was sore, and he found that merely walking tired him out.

  Curious, he checked his status. The restorative items had only increased his maximum hit points and energy points. His actual hit points and energy points had only slightly increased after his prolonged rest. It was clear that regenerating those points would take longer because he was injured.

  Scott wandered out into the hallway beyond and realized that he had been put up in some sort of supply room down a cul-de-sac. The mall proper lay beyond that short hall and it was quite something. A bi-level set-up with escalators and a glass-walled elevator, it was a reasonably decent sized building to take in survivors. If they could fortify the place, the survivors could live with a modicum of comfort here.

  In the manga, as the show had not reached this point, things went south and then… Scott suddenly stopped short. “Then what?” he whispered to himself.

  It had been years since he read the manga, and most of the stuff that happened after the anime ended was not fresh in his mind. Still, it all slowly came back to him. His eyes widened. If the events of the manga transpired here, then there was indeed hope for these people. The problem was the timing. By now there should have been a few things happening that hadn’t.

  Apparently, the main cast existed here in some form or another, but sometimes events occurred differently than he might anticipate. The zombies were perverts. Some characters that should have died did not die, and others that should have briefly had screen time never showed up.

  Admittedly, he was the cause of some of that divergence, but there was a lot of stuff that would have happened regardless of his presence. One thing came to mind, however. “Today or tomorrow, it’s going to get a whole lot darker.”

  “What is that guy wearing?” asked someone nearby.

  Scott glanced over to the woman speaking, and she quickly looked away. She looked like some sort of office lady, but he could not be certain. Next to her were a couple of men, one of which gave him the stink eye. The other was an old man who held a pack of cigarettes tightly in his hand while he tried not to look at Scott’s man nipples.

  He thought about introducing himself but then decided they weren’t worth bothering with at the moment. Instead, he wandered off toward another side of the second floor. He happened across a strange scene.

  “K-Otakun… you’re so forceful with Salami,” said the hyperactive blond police officer.

  Otakun adjusted his position behind her and helped her to steady her aim. She’d had training in the academy, but female officers were not typically assigned firearms. It had been months since she fired a weapon.

  Scott smiled at them then released a gentle sigh. It was nice to see something like that. Even from his current angle he could see that Otakun was smiling. This was his element. Firearms were something he understood.

  A hissing sound from nearby made him think that someone had let a cat into the mall, but as it turned out this cat had pink twin-tails. It was obvious that she had not seen him, but he could see Momoko hiding behind some boxes staring at Otakun and Salami.

  He grinned then made a quick save in case things went very wrong. Afterward Scott snuck up behind Momoko and squatted behind her. She was so engrossed with being annoyed at ‘that stupid tubby’ that she did not even realize that a predator had appeared.

  “What does that chubby idiot think he’s doing?” asked Momoko in a petulant whisper.

  “Trouble in paradise?” asked Scott lightly.

  Momoko froze stiff then her ponytails flew sideways in defiance of gravity. She hopped up with a loud, “Kyaa!” and flailed her arms about in a ridiculous display.

  She started to fall forward, but Scott instinctively reached out and grabbed one of her ponytails in an attempt to keep her from falling. She fell anyway, knocking over the boxes in such a way that she ended up laying halfway on top of one with her ass pointed toward Scott’s loin cloth.

  Otakun and Salami came running at the sound of the scream, arriving just in time to see a gasping, red-faced Momoko, with her ass pressed back against Scott’s loin cloth. Her head was pulled back and to the side by one of her ponytails. The scene caused her panted breaths to seem awfully erotic as her chest rose and fell unobstructed by her twintails and their viewing angle.

  Scott looked to Otakun, then down to Momoko, and then back to Otakun. “Sup, bro?”

  Momoko managed to regain her composure enough to cry out, “Get off right now!”

  “Goodness, in front of the others no less?” said Scott with a gasp.

  Otakun’s eyes went wide and a trickle of blood ran down his nose. “I like tater tots…”

  He dropped to his knees and began
to wobble in place a little. He had seen too much.

  “Otakun!” cried Salami. The police girl got down on her knees and began to fuss over him.

  “What’s going on here?” cried another familiar voice.

  Scott actually flinched this time. Slowly, he turned his head toward Saiko.

  The purple haired beauty looked to the panting Momoko who still had not gotten up off the floor. Sweat poured down her face and she even lightly wiggled her ass against Scott’s loin cloth. It was obvious that his hentai protagonist aura was working on the girl, her panted breaths were becoming quite cute.

  “Funny story,” said Scott.

  Saiko slowly raised her wooden blade into a ready stance. “So, when was the last time you made a save?”

  Scott’s eyes widened comically. “Hey now!”

  “T-this isn’t…” panted Momoko. She moaned a little then gasped. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth a little. “I don’t know what this is…”

  “Hey?” asked Summer as she walked up on the soon. “Why’s my husband having an affair without telling me?”

  Scott sighed. “This is going to be complicated, isn’t?”

  Summer sniffled a little and her eyes teared up. Though, it was obvious that she was playing around by the slight twitch of her lips. Suddenly, she placed the back of her hand to her forehead and cried out, “My darling has left me for a younger woman! Whatever is to become of me and the children?”

  This, of course, brought a crowd. Officer Motorola appeared, and immediately reached for her firearm. “What’s the meaning of this.”

  Scott released Momoko’s ponytail then rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I really need to work on my sense of humor.”

  Momoko’s clung heavily to the box and panted even harder. “Whazzat?”

  The situation was explained easily enough, despite Momoko’s flush face and occasional whimpers. They were both fully clothed, and there were boxes all over the place. What most people could not quite understand was the reason why Momoko had been mumbling stupid barbarian while rubbing her ass against his crotch.

  Eventually, the hubbub died down and Scott sat across from Officer Motorola at a small table in the security office. She eyed him with a skeptical eyebrow, but did not speak of the Momoko incident further. She did, however, have other questions.

  “Listen, I do understand that you are well meaning but there is no reason to give people false hope,” she said. “I’ve seen what it’s like out there. No help is coming.”

  “Ultimately, that’s up to you to decide. I am not in charge of the survivors here,” said Scott. He nodded to her. “However, there is a good chance that what I have told you is true. Though, it is also possible that you may need to get to that elementary school to guarantee your extraction.”

  Motorola shook her head. “These people can’t go out there. They aren’t as… colorful as you.”

  A slight grin told her what she needed to know about him. “What if we can get proof?”

  “Proof would be wonderful, but how would you get it?” she asked him coolly.

  “The power is still on, so what’s the closest place that a national broadcast would be broadcasted?” asked Scott.

  “There is no broadcast,” she said. “While it is unlikely that anyone is working at a television or radio station the emergency system would be able to take over at least a few stations via satellite given that the power is, as you said, still on.”

  Scott did not know what else to say on the matter. The emergency broadcast would not start until sometime after the EMP burst, if that was even a thing in this world. Given the timetable, that could be any time either that day or the next. At this point they would have just left the house of Momoko’s parents had they been home.

  Of course, that was another odd consideration. Officer Motorola should not have left the mall until after that nuclear explosion killed most of the electronics in the area. The timeline was off.

  All but one of those missiles fired toward Japan were stopped in the show, but what if they were never fired in this world. What if the US missile defense system did not miss one even if they were fired? How would that change things? There were too many what-if scenarios given their point in the timeline.

  Scott did realize something, however. They were one to three days early for where they were supposed to be if they used the series as a guide. Worse, with special infected running around there was no way to know how things had changed. It was possible that one of the big bastards had appeared and killed everyone on the ship that should be offshore. There might not be a rescue.

  This world, for all its similarities, was not a television show. It had some anime-aesthetics, and strange moments that defied the laws of physics, but in the end the truth was the truth.

  Life in the shopping mall was tense for those who survived there, but with officer Motorola around it was not teetering on the edge of mutiny. As long as the other survivors had a police officer to blame and manipulate into doing things to save their sorry asses, they were able to maintain a semblance of sanity.

  “As you seem to be something of a leader to those students, I must make a request,” said Officer Motorola.

  “I’m not going to ask them to give you the guns,” he responded with a sigh. “They seem young for the most part, but they are all in college.”

  It was something that he had forgotten to add to the list of oddities for this world. The first day in the apocalypse he had heard someone mention something about everyone being in college. Just how old were the members of his little parody troupe? Had they told him? Sometimes it was hard to remember. It was like dying screwed with his brain, or something, because things tended to merge or disappear from his thoughts altogether.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I am an officer of the law… Those weapons are illegal in the hands of anyone other than law enforcement personnel registered to use them.”

  “It’s also illegal to rape someone to death and to eat their corpse while you do so. There’s a lot of that going around these days, too,” replied Scott coolly.

  She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Clearly I don’t have the power to enforce the law at the moment, but you do know that if any sort of rescue operation does come those firearms will be confiscated.”

  “At that point, I would think they would not mind turning them over,” said Scott. Though he did immediately think of Otakun’s firearm obsession. He might not want to release them for any reason.

  He finished his conversation with Officer Motorola and left her makeshift office. Essentially both of the officers at the mall were the Japanese equivalent to meter maids. They were traffic officers and carried no firearm on a typical day at work. That was bad for the mall’s defenses if the critters outside decided to try to get inside. The gun that Officer Motorola had was one she found during the original escape into the mall.

  This situation led to a major altercation when the rest of the group showed up with their firearms and ammo. Japan was not a nation with a strong firearm culture. It was extremely difficult for a civilian to acquire one. In many cases it was more trouble than it was worth. Even the police department would get up in arms if a single round of ammunition was unaccounted for during an officer’s training session at the range.

  Most people were rendered nearly helpless due to that fact. In the anime, the little survival group acquired methods and means that a normal group of people had no chance to replicate. Not everyone had a team with a gun otaku, and a busty nurse with a special police operative best friend. It had always seemed a bit hypocritical to him when that group made it seem like everyone else should be able to survive just as easy when most of the population had no combat training and at best a piece of pipe or a knife to defend themselves.

  Hell, Scott recognized that he had the ultimate survival trait. Yet, he understood how easy it was to die when he did not have much in the way of plot armor. Sure, his autosave was the thickest armor ever designed but at the end of the
day nothing prevented him from reaping the sewn repercussions of his own foolish actions. If he did something that would kill a normal person, there was a good chance that he would die as well.

  Scott decided to roam around the mall for a while in search of stores where no one was hanging around. No one was manning the security office other than Officer Motorola, and she was only there during official business or whatever. This meant that he was free to itemize anything he could find.

  He wandered into a trendy clothing store and meandered around for a while. Most of the items that he found were only good for a point or two, and some would not itemize at all. His current lack of an energy cost might be the culprit, but the system had always been arbitrary.

  Tosh came stomping up to him as he finished itemizing a piece of lingerie designed for a very big girl. He stopped right in front of Scott with his hands on his hips. Briefly, Scott wondered if the man had been possessed by the spirit of someone’s bratty little sister.

  “Hmm?” asked Scott.

  “Look, ‘bro’ we need to talk,” said Tosh.

  “Oh?” asked Scott. “What about?”

  Tosh growled at him. “You know what about!”

  “Be specific. There are a lot of things to talk about,” said Scott.

  Tosh slapped his hands down on the table and glared at him. “You need to stop putting your hands all over the girls! It’s getting creepy!”

  “Creepy to who? They sure don’t complain about it to me,” replied Scott casually.

  Tosh threw his hands up in the air and shouted, “Is this a fucking joke to you? After what you did to Momoko?”

  “Try to catch her when she was falling over?” asked Scott. “Yeah, I’m a total asshole.”

  “That’s it! You’re out!” he snarled.