“Hey, at least mine’s inconspicuous.”
“Like a trench coat and a porn-stache.”
With a huff, Benny made it clear he’d had enough of being insulted, and stormed off to his three men, each of whom was staring at me with unmistakable hatred.
“You ever think people will stop hating me?” I asked tiredly.
No one responded for a few seconds before Quinn finally piped up, “Are you talking to me or..?”
“Anyone, either, both, doesn’t matter. Owen, what do you think?”
“Honestly? I don’t think those guys’ll ever end up being friendly, but, that being said, doesn’t mean you can’t utilize ‘em.”
At first I took that as pretty demoralizing, the realization that they would never be okay with me no matter what I did, but then I took into account Owen’s other point.
“Are you saying I should use them and bail?”
“I’m saying you should do what works for you,” Owen replied sympathetically, “if they’re a bag o’ dicks then screw ‘em, you go do your own thing and leave them to get squished by Callomezi, but if they pull their heads in… I don’t know, it’s really up to you what you do, but know that you doing good work here could make a real difference.”
I liked Owen, he was a straight shooter and left a lot of the choice up to me, but he still put his thumb on the scale. To me that meant he gave a damn about what I thought, regardless of what he wanted.
That or he just knew how to manipulate me.
Eh, potato tomato.
“Eddie!” Benny shouted from the van, “Get over ‘ere!”
I didn’t appreciate being yelled at, though I wasn’t about to start another pissing contest over it, “Thanks for the Freedom,” I said with a smile before shaking Owen’s hand, “I’ll make sure I put it to good use.”
“Heh, sure you will,” Owen replied before waving his hand around and making another inhaler appear in my palm as I pulled away, “I’ll make sure your car is kept safe.”
“Ha, thanks, I’ll call it if I need it.”
With that, I turned around and left, my smile still firmly in place and a slight hop in my step as I moved toward the obviously upset freedom fighters and their van.
I had the strongest feeling we were going to end up being the very best of friends.
A SUPER DUPER FUN ROADTRIP
“So,” I practically blurted out after five minutes of driving in complete silence doing nothing but looking between the five small wooden crates stacked up against the van’s wall, “this is gonna be fun, huh?”
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get a response from either of the skinny, suit-wearing white guys in the back of the van with me, other than cold stares that had been there since the beginning.
“I sincerely think they don’t like you very much.” Quinn whispered playfully, “Or at all for that matter.”
“No, I don’t think they do either.”
That earned me a momentary glance of confusion which made me smile, not because I’d gotten a response, just because I was glad that Quinn and I were back to being able to keep most of our conversations to ourselves.
“What’s in these boxes?” I asked before kicking one of the crates, making not only the two men with me jump, but also Benny in the driver’s seat.
“What the Hell is wrong with you!?” Benny roared after it became clear that whatever they were worried about happening wasn’t going to, “You heard me ask for imploders, right? What part of ‘imploder’ says ‘kick the box’!?”
“Hey, not my fault that I’m gettin’ bored.” I replied, successfully hiding the fact that knowing I’d almost killed us all nearly made me wet myself, “Your guys are the ones who refuse to offer any kinda conversation. What happened to common courtesy?”
“It got less common after you bombed our world to Hell.” one of Benny’s unnamed rebels growled, “We’re just trying to pick up the pieces of the mess you made.”
While I wanted to defend myself, I could see where they were coming from, as far as they were concerned a bunch of smugglers had gone rogue and attacked them, but at the same time I wasn’t exactly in the mood to explain to them how I wasn’t the bad guy.
“So what’s an imploder?” I asked, lifting the lid off the crate and changing the subject in one fell swoop, “Some kinda grenade or something…”
My mouth failed to form the right words as I looked into the crate and saw a good dozen Black Orbs neatly stacked next to a few of Owen’s Freedom inhalers.
“Where did you get these?” I muttered as I gently lifted one of them out of the crate.
“Owen,” Benny replied after his men didn’t respond, “you were there, right?”
“No, how did you get these? These things shouldn’t be accessible to players, Hell, they shouldn’t even exist without Code Jumpers.”
“Is there a chance it has something to do with the one you left with Callomezi?” Quinn suggested, deepening my already trench-like guilt as I remembered why I’d given Callomezi the info in the first place.
“Probably, yeah…” I trailed off ashamedly before putting the imploder back in its crate, “What do they do?”
“What do you think?” Benny mocked, “They implode, sucking everything inward and devouring them with a charming little ‘pop’.”
“What, people too?”
“Of course people too,” Benny scoffed matter-of-factly, “wouldn’t be a very effective weapon if it didn’t affect people.”
I’m not sure why, but that was enough to elicit a quiet sigh of relief from me, “So they’re not Black Orbs…”
“It would appear not,” Quinn said, obviously equally relieved as me, “guess they just mimicked the design.”
“What’s a ‘Black Orb’?” the other skinny guy asked as a smile came to my face, “Some kinda Code Jumper weapon?”
“Eh, something like that.” I replied before looking up at the curious soldier, “Basically they absorb stuff for later reconstruction and use.”
“And not people?”
“Not people.”
Clearly the idea of not using something like a Black Orb in a solely combat form made no sense to Benny’s men, but it didn’t have to make sense to them.
I was the one who needed information.
“Where’re all these men of yours?” I asked with more arrogance than I’d intended, “Because I only count three from here.”
“They’re at our base,” Benny replied with an irritated sigh, “which is about twenty miles outside o’ Callomezi’s city, which is a Hell of a long way to listen to you yammerin’ the whole time.”
A cheeky grin landed on my face before I could stop it, “I disagree.”
“Of course you do…” Benny muttered, “Just… try not to piss me off too much, alright? Last thing I need is to lose my shit and drive us into a tree.”
“Well that seems like a bit of an overreaction to what amounts to simple banter,” Quinn said, “I think this guy could definitely use a quick zap to the brain.”
“Heh, no,” I chuckled, “I think we’ll be fine.”
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun, it’ll definitely make him more fun.”
“No, we are not electrocuting anyone’s brain.”
With the help of some very concerned looking faces, I re-realized that Quinn could not be heard by the rest of the van.
“Don’t worry guys,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster, “I promise I won’t listen to the voices in my head.”
Surprisingly, that didn’t make anyone feel any better.
People are strange creatures.
THE HIPSTER ARMY
Rolling into the base was a strange experience, mostly because it looked less like a base and more like some kind of sci-fi hipster convention running out of an abandoned aircraft hangar.
“So…” I said as I dropped out of the van before realizing I didn’t actually have anything to say, “nice base.”
“Thanks.” Benny replied dism
issively from the driver’s seat, “Franco! I need you start handing out the Freedom!”
“You got it boss!” Franco shouted from the other side of the hangar before running over.
Franco seemed a bit nicer than the ones I’d been riding with, but he still looked like a guy who was one soy latte from starting a Kickstarter for his rent.
“Is this it?” I asked after Benny had begrudgingly come over to stand beside me, “Doesn’t look like much.”
“Three dozen men and women who can alter the world around them with a flick of their wrists isn’t enough for you?” Benny scoffed.
“From what I’ve heard they aren’t exactly God-tier, are they?” I replied, doing my best to sound respectful.
“No,” Benny growled, “but they’ve got enough juice to punch a hole through Callomezi’s city.”
I think that’s about when I decided that I needed to change my tactic with Benny. I’d hoped that he’d eventually buckle to playful banter, but that seem like it was going to happen any time soon.
“I’m sure they will,” I said with a confident smile, “I’m just worried that they haven’t got enough power to survive the attack, aren’t you worried that they’ll get hurt?”
“If they die, they die.” Benny replied with a shrug, “We’re lucky enough to be blessed with relative immortality.”
“Heh, s’pose I hadn’t really thought about that.”
“That’s because you’re screwed if you die,” Benny said with a sort of sick delight before turning sour again, “and that’s what we’re gonna strive to prevent.”
“Glad to hear you’re so eager to sacrifice their lives for me.” I muttered as the last of the inhalers were handed out, “Quinn, how’s things? You come up with any strategies?”
“What? Hmm? What?” Quinn stammered out confusedly, “Oh, yes, sorry, I was… busy.”
“Doing what?” I asked after Benny rolled his eyes and stalked off to assemble his men.
“Just trying to figure out the code, make sure it’s safe enough for you to fiddle with it.”
“I don’t ‘fiddle’ with the code, I… I…”
Quinn let out a little giggle at that, “Don’t worry, what you do is much manlier than fiddling. Anyway, good news is I think you’re free when it comes to your standard hacking, but I’d be careful with weather and whatnot, looks like they’ve built a pretty delicate ecosystem here.”
“And the slight change’ll kill everyone?”
“Eh, not exactly, but it’ll make a mess that I’m sure Callomezi will spot in a heartbeat. So, no tornados, at least not until you’re in his office.”
I smiled at the thought of setting up an isolated hurricane in a penthouse before realizing just how bad that would actually be, “What can you tell me about these guys? They trustworthy?”
“I couldn’t comment on that with any sort of accuracy, people are flippant, but I can tell you that they all seem to respect Benny based on their physical reactions upon seeing him.”
“Well that’s good at least, I’ll just have to try extra hard to make sure he doesn’t decide I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”
“You, troublesome? No.” Quinn scoffed, “Honestly though, I think he’s going to keep you alive as long as possible, at least long enough to get himself in a room with Callomezi.”
“And what fun that’ll be.”
Quinn went to say something else, but was cut off by Benny letting out a piercing whistle that managed to cut through the entire hangar before barking “Code Jumper, get your ass over here!”
“How long’s he been calling for me?” I quietly asked as I started walking over to where Benny had set up his formation of ‘troops’.
“That was his first attempt at communication as far as I can tell,” Quinn replied with what sounded like pain, apparently whatever passed for her ears were just as affected by the whistle as mine, “someone should teach him there are nicer ways to do that.”
“And we won’t be them.” I warned jovially, “No working me like a puppet so I sock him in the mouth or anything like that.”
“Don’t give me any ideas.” Quinn joked as I came to stand beside Benny.
I was a good three feet from him, but I could still see he was angry, nasally breathing, as well as that of the men and women in front of us, all of whom obviously having the same level of unquestionable rage toward me.
“Now that you’re here,” Benny practically spat, “we can get started.”
I didn’t appreciate being blamed for stuff I had no control over, obviously, but I was still Hell-bent on making sure I was as polite as possible.
“Sorry,” I said through my teeth after no small amount of internal struggling, “I’ll do my best to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”
“You see that it doesn’t.” Benny snapped, “Alright, there’re three stages to this plan. Richard, what’s stage one?”
A young man stepped forward boldly at that, “We infiltrate the city using teleportation following the use of Freedom Two.”
“Very good,” Benny said with a smile, “now, Persephone, what’s stage two?”
“Regroup at the old subway station beneath Callomezi’s fortress,” a woman in the front row, maybe in her thirties, said without moving, “from there we storm the building with everything we’ve got.”
Benny gave her a nod, eliciting a smile from her, “Fantastic, and Tina, what’s stage three?”
“Clear a hole for the Code Jumper so he can take out Callomezi and his elite guard.” someone, clearly Tina, said from the back of the crowd.
“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked, “Since when has Callomezi had guards? I thought he just had an army?”
“Guard singular,” Benny replied, clearly irritated that I’d jumped in with a question, “and why would you know? You’ve been here what, an hour?”
“Try four, and part of that was spent with you and the funky bunch mopin’ around in a van.” I snapped before I could stop myself, “You didn’t think that maybe I should have that information?”
“You have it now.” Benny said with a smirk, “Is it going to be a problem?”
I wanted to demand more information before I gave my answer, but for whatever reason, probably to avoid seeming weak, I straightened up, cleared my throat, and smiled, “Not at all, just point me in the right direction and I’ll put down Callomezi, his guard, and his nuclear-powered tigers if need be.”
“Need might actually be,” Quinn clarified as Benny angrily turned his attention back to his troops, “I know you want to seem brave or whatever, but there’s every chance in the world that Callomezi and whoever he’s got with him could throw some pretty heavy stuff at you, are you sure you don’t want any more information?”
Again, I did, but at the same time I wasn’t ready to start pulling it out of Benny and his crew of misfits.
“I think I’ll be fine.”
And then I died.
SPEECHES AND SUBWAYS
Okay, so maybe I didn’t die, but I deserved to for tempting fate like that.
Anyway, Benny was giving his troops a rousing speech about bravery and camaraderie while I stood there silently seething. After a grueling ten minutes, we got to the end of his speech and his soldiers, if you could even call them that, went to work.
“So, teleportation?” I asked as I followed after Benny, “That sounds like it’ll be fun.”
“Eh, depends on how resilient you are when it comes to feeling like your skin is boiling off and your brain is melting.”
I knew he was screwing with me, but I didn’t know in which way. Either he was smart and knew I knew and was building up for something that wasn’t going to hurt whatsoever, or he was less or more smart, depending on the way you look at it, and he was underplaying the crap out of it.
Whichever it was, I didn’t like it.
“When will we be using them?” I asked in the hopes that it would swiftly kill the thoughts of me coming out the other si
de of the teleporter crispy.
“Five minutes or so, we’ve still got some preparing to do. You think that AI of yours’ll be able to get you to where we need you to be?”
I waited a few seconds for Quinn to respond, but the witty retort never came so I settled for a nod on her behalf.
“Good,” Benny replied, “we only get one shot at this, and if you screw it up I swear I’ll make sure you don’t get the benefit of death.”
After that Benny went ahead and stalked off to, I assume, order the death of some Porgs or something equally defenseless and adorable.
“Hey, Quinn?” I whispered softly, “You doin’ alright? You’ve been a bit quiet.”
There were a few seconds of silence before Quinn let out a chirpy breath like she’d just woken up, “Sorry, what? Oh, yes, yes I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” I asked with very real concern, “You’ve been drifting off a lot over the past few hours.”
“Mmhm… I mean yes, I’m aware. Sorry, it’s just… there’s a great deal to go through, you know? And I only have so much processing power.”
“So what are you focusing on at the moment? Maybe I can help you out a bit?”
“That’s very sweet, but I doubt it.” Quinn replied kindly without the delay I’d started to expect, “I’m looking into that guard Benny mentioned, I’m trying to see just how powerful he or she is, but I can’t find anything.”
“Too messy?”
“That’s just it, it’s not messy enough, that’s what concerns me, it’s squeaky clean.”
I tilted my head in confusion as I reached and leaned against the van, “How is that a problem?”
“Well… Okay, so you know how I’ve been having trouble reading the code?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, this stuff I can see, and it all makes sense.”
Unsurprisingly, that confused me further, “So the issue is..?”
“That Callomezi is being defended by a vanilla coded sausage.”
Code Jumper Page 24
