“Only seems fair, especially if I do the heavy lifting.”
“Do the bulk of the work and you’ll get the bulk of the XP for a knockout, bud. We’re in a game with the most advanced AI system known to man. You really think final blows are all they’re cracked up to be?”
Scale blinked. I hadn’t noticed before, but his eyelids closed horizontally. It was freaky.
“This really is your first build, isn’t it?” I asked, not caring about the answer.
“Why are we hunting at night, anyway?” he growled.
“We’ve been over this, Scale. Starshot’s powers regenerate at half the rate at night time, without the sun to bolster her.”
“Then what makes you think she’s going to venture out of the safety of Titan City if that’s the case?”
“She doesn’t know I know that,” I said, thinking of the Ythilian core.
Something caught my eye, and it wasn’t one of the artificial stars shining in the artificial curtain above.
“And because that’s her, now.”
Scale almost stood up, and I had to press down on his shoulder hard to get him to settle.
We sank back down, lower than before, and watched as Starshot approached.
She looked like a shooting star at first, flying – no, jumping, it seemed – over the dirt valleys farther in. She was glowing, but the yellow light seemed to dissipate as she reached the zenith of her leaps. She must be conserving her energy, putting short bursts of power into her feet to propel her leaps, then adding a little burst at the top of her arcs to survey the ground below.
Spooks abandoned the plan, the white icon above his head shimmering as the fear of the hero’s impending arrival threatened to snap him right out of my control. He ceased his patrol and took off at a run, going over head-first as he smashed into a discarded bicycle and followed it down into a miniature mountain of gears and springs.
“Desperate indeed,” I whispered. I meant it for myself, but Scale wasn’t one to let a thought lie.
“Probably trying to earn her stripes,” he posited.
I frowned at him.
“You’re the one who says he’s played before, right?” Scale asked. “Were all your builds villains?”
“None.”
“And you never tried to join a guild?”
“Oh, I tried,” I said, feeling it strange to admit how naïve I’d been. How blind to the pearly smile and highlight reels. “I thought there was still a seat at the top table for another player. It’s what they always hint at. I bet she thinks that, too,” I added, my thoughts turning back to Starshot.
I wanted to reset the system, bring back the spirit the game had in the early days before Leviathan. Before the rigid guild system funneled players along lines the higher-ups desired, before the sponsorship deals became too good for the big shots to risk losing face; before I’d become a cynic. Back then, I was as wide-eyed as Starshot.
Maybe that was what I was really fighting for.
I felt a pressure against my side.
“Stop—”
Scale shushed me and stopped pressing his nails into my side. If I hadn’t been wearing one of Luther’s armored vests beneath my coat, he’d have drawn blood.
A sudden flash had me wincing. When it subsided, I saw Starshot floating above the basin before us. She was at eye level with Scale and me, glowing brightly, putting more energy out than she had earlier. She was hovering, and I saw little bursts of light coming from her downturned palms and the soles of her thin white boots. Her eyes glowed like the core of the sun itself, and her hair swam like blond locks catching summer rays.
For a startling instant, I thought she was looking right at me, and then I saw her chin tilt downward. When she spoke, it didn’t quite match the image she was likely trying to project. More of a tired, angry girl than a mystical hero.
“You there!” she called, and Spooks froze amid his junk-spewing thrashing. He stared up at her like she was a righteous angel, or the herald of his doom.
Starshot began to glide down toward him, her fingers splayed. She continued to pump out small charges to keep from plummeting, and I wondered how much energy she had spent for the show. She really took the role-playing seriously. Spook was only an NPC, and a low-level one. He didn’t have a stat approaching six among his suite. At least Carlyle had a ten or two.
“Get ready,” I whispered, leaning toward Scale, who licked his lips hungrily. “You’re almost up.”
“She doesn’t look like much,” Scale said. “Doubt I’ll have to bring out the Rage for this little lass.”
I kept my opinion on the matter to myself. I didn’t need Scale to defeat Starshot. I just needed him to tire her out, in a manner of speaking.
“Who do you work for?” Starshot asked, touching down on the dirt below. She cringed as Spooks struggled to extricate himself from the pile.
“Who do you work for?” Starshot shouted, giving herself a little flare for effect. It was quite mesmerizing to look upon, but it made me smile for other reasons. We might not even have to get involved at the rate the show was going.
Spooks tried to get the words out, the icon above his greasy little head flickering all the while. But it wasn’t his mouth that gave us away, but his eyes. The quivering brown orbs traced the junk from base to crest and settled at the top.
Right at us.
“I’ll have to have a talk with dear Spooks after this,” I said as Starshot turned around, her bright sunlit eyes shining like lanterns in the night.
“Right, then,” Scale said, rising with a groan and sending a cascade of metal down the slide. “Guess I’m up.”
I couldn’t tell if Starshot saw me or not. I assumed my mask would be illuminated in the moonlight, but Scale cut an imposing figure and took the bulk of her attention. She squared to meet him when he executed a controlled tumble down to the bottom.
Scale brushed himself off and puffed his chest out, unfurling his green-brown hands at his sides, inch-long nails catching what light the stains along their lengths would allow.
“My name’s Scale,” he said, crossing one arm over his chest and bowing in a mock gesture.
Starshot smirked. “I am—”
“Going to die tonight,” the lizard finished for her, his teeth showing.
Starshot winced, and I saw a bit of fear on her for the first time. Something I hadn’t been able to pull out. Maybe the overgrown gecko was good for something after all.
“I take it you work for Despot,” she said, her voice bold.
Encounter Imminent
Starshot
Tier 6 Hero
Threat Index: Neutral
I heard the telltale buzz of a viewer bot. The spherical camera hovered just over the lip of the junk bowl, intent on the impending encounter below.
Another junk slide started on the opposite side of the miniature valley. Starshot watched as Greek and Damon approached, black spears sparking blue at the tips. She turned one foot toward them, and then a sound from behind had her whirling. Spooks remained where he was, cowering in his pile, but Carlyle strode confidently toward her, his own spear lit with a steady blue tip, like a poker left in the grate.
“All of you, then,” she said. “Clever of him, to have you waiting for me.” She smiled, but I didn’t think she meant it.
“Nothing personal,” Scale said, taking a step forward as Starshot took one toward the center of the basin. She was surrounded by the four of them and spun in a slow circle, hands down, palms open. Her eyes still glowed, but the light had faded from her white suit.
For now.
“Shame he wouldn’t come himself,” she said. “I didn’t intend to kick off two rivalries in a week.”
“No offense taken,” Scale said easily. He came to stand just a pair of strides from her.
The five figures in the dirt bowl were still for a pregnant minute, and then the sun came up.
At least, that’s what it looked like from my vantage point.
; Where Starshot stood in the center, a blinding flare went off. I was spared the brunt of it given my distance, but not Carlyle, Damon or Greek, all of them crying in anguish.
I heard a hollow impact and the sound of resin shattering and looked up and then back down in time to see Starshot emerge from the globe of light she’d conjured. She had put a burst from the bottoms of her heels into the ground and shot toward Damon and Greek, hitting both in the chest with her palms out. There were two yellow flashes where her palms struck, and a slight delay before Damon and Greek were sent flying backward. They hit the wall on the opposite side of the bowl with enough force to see them buried, and they didn’t stir, the ends of their spears still sparking with a latent charge.
Encounter Begins
Despot vs Starshot
Her attacking my minions had looped me into the fight by default. And I was off to a bad start.
Alert: Damon and Greek are unconscious. They cannot receive orders.
Carlyle charged forward next, swinging his spear like a baton, but I could tell he was blinded. He shielded his face with his left forearm and swung with the right. Starshot turned toward him, her form outlined in that golden sunset veil, and extended one hand in his direction. A roar from Scale had her eyes darting to her left, and Carlyle seized on the chance, covering the distance between them faster than I thought his agility score capable of.
A direct hit to the crown of the head might have done some real damage. As it stood, Carlyle’s vision was blurred and his aim slightly off the mark. Still, he managed to crack Starshot on the left shoulder. She cried out as sparks jumped from the point of impact, and lanced her right hand forward, blasting Carlyle back with another burst of energy.
Starshot: 92% HP
Carlyle slammed into Spooks, who was only now extricating himself from his sorry predicament, and the two went down in a violent tangle. Down, but not completely out of the fight.
I pushed myself up onto the palms of my hands as Scale leapt for the embattled hero, then marveled as Starshot put another burst of energy into the balls of her feet and darted backward. Scale came down on the spot she’d been like a pitbull recently bereft of its chew toy.
When Starshot skidded to a halt, she raised both of her arms. Her left came up slow and twitchy, and I saw that the white suit had been ripped along the top of her arm due to Carlyle’s strike. Starshot gritted her teeth and lit her palms, fingers splayed, and a beam ignited the path between her and Scale.
The cone of light hit Scale full in the chest with concussive force and drove him back. I thought he’d be buried like Damon and Greek, but when his back met the base of the metal hill behind him and below me, he dug his clawed feet in through the tattered remnants of his leather boots and ground his yellowed fangs.
“That’s it,” I said eagerly. “Pull it out, Croc. Make her work for it.”
Scale was being buffeted by a steady ray of sunlight that lit the junk bowl like the glittering underside of a crystal formation. It didn’t seem to have a heat element to it, otherwise Scale’s thick hide would have begun to bubble, but the concussive force was significant if it was holding him back.
Scale: 76% HP
Starshot took one strenuous step toward the brute, and then another, her face tight with concentration. When she reached the midway point between them, she let the beam go out, and Scale slumped at the end of it, his chest heaving, one hand splayed in the dirt as he worked to catch his breath.
The hero was also breathing heavily, and I ran my hand inside my coat, feeling for the stasis gun.
A shout from the left caused Starshot to whirl around, but too late. Carlyle had managed to keep hold of his spear, and rather than bringing it around and down in an overhead chop, this time he jabbed forward, aiming for the gut.
Starshot extended her right hand toward him and conjured another burst of energy, but the end of the baton struck her hard. Carlyle was sent back again, and this time, he groaned weakly when he landed. Still, the baton had done its work, bringing Starshot to her knees. She flung it away with a curse and clutched at her stomach.
Alert: Carlyle has lost consciousness. He cannot receive orders.
Starshot: 86% HP
Judging by the look on the hero’s face, she was reading more than just her dwindling HP. I guessed she had an eye on her energy stores. She probably had enough power to make a quick exit, but I wasn’t about to let that happen.
Before I could get to my feet and make my way down to the bottom to join in the festivities, Scale roared and shook me back into a crawling position. His eyes went yellow, sick and wild as opposed to Starshot’s ethereal gold as he activated his Rage superpower.
The lizard charged across the dirt, sending fragments of metal and rusted parts flying, and Starshot could barely raise her battered left arm as a weak ward as he barreled into her like a bull. They went down, and when the dust cleared, Scale had her white spandex arm clenched between his jaws, and his hands curled around her thin neck.
Starshot: 60% HP
The two of them strained against one another for a few agonizing, violent moments before Scale bit down, hard, and blood squirted from the wound, splashing down over Starshot’s face. I don’t know if it was the damage or the shock of the sight that had her aura flickering, but she was fading. Scale eased forward, pressing the wounded limb against the hero’s chest as he squeezed his death grip.
Starshot: 45% HP
I thought of calling him off, and then thought better of it. Wasn’t this why we had come? What did it matter if Scale finished her off for the Infamy? My only concern was that Scale didn’t seem to be easing up – if he wasn’t careful, he might outright kill her.
As it turned out, Starshot was not quite ready to concede. It seemed she had managed to squirrel away a good bit of energy, and in his Rage and haste, Scale had neglected to account for the positioning of her right arm.
Starshot pressed her fingers against that burly green chest and said something I could not hear at this distance. His eyes widened an instant before the charge went off, and when it did, I stood, watching the beam shoot Scale skyward and sending him in a rainbow arc out of the junk bowl. He fell with a faint splash in one of the rivers. Nothing official from the game signaled the fight was over, so he must have survived, if barely above the 10% HP knockout point.
I swallowed and turned back toward the bowl. Though I was standing on the lip of the ridge, silhouetted against the blue night and the white stars above, my mask leering like a ghost under the moonlight, Starshot didn’t notice me.
Starshot: 30% HP
She struggled to her feet, shaking with the effort.
I slid to the bottom of the hill, and Starshot didn’t look up at me until an old brass doorknob I had dislodged rolled over and settled in the dirt below her. She raised her chin and tried to affect a somewhat casual air, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Ah,” she said. “Despot. Just the man I wanted to see.” The pile to my right and her left shifted, and I saw fear in evidence as Starshot looked toward it, anxious to see if Scale had returned. Spooks had begun to stir, but the others were badly injured, and my UI informed me they were unable to receive orders.
“Back home with the others, Spooks,” I said, nodding at him. He swallowed, watching me with those raccoon’s eyes as if he expected retribution for his earlier failure. In truth, his display had worked out perfectly for our side. Whether it was intentional or not was another story. “Take the long way.”
“Aye,” Spooks said. He walked over to Carlyle’s groggy form and lifted him with limping effort. The two made their way over to Damon and Greek, attempting to rouse them.
Starshot did not attempt to intervene. She watched my NPC soldiers wake each other up and then limp their way through the hills of trash. After she watched them go, she looked my way. She seemed to have a knack for locating my eyes even within the shadows of my mask. In fact, she seemed utterly unbothered by my whole getup.
“Quite
the trap you sprang,” Starshot said. She spoke easily, and her eyes, which had lost some of their luster, had already begun to glow a bit brighter than they had a few moments before. Every ten seconds that went by I was allowing her stores to build. No matter outward appearances, she was still a threat, or soon would be.
“Don’t,” I said as she raised a palm toward me. I swept the right wing of my jacket aside and showed her the barrel of the stasis gun. She didn’t need to know its exact function to make a guess. Her eyes widened when she saw it, and then traced the silver bulbs along my belt.
“Seems we’ve reached a stalemate,” Starshot said, smiling.
She seemed pleased at the prospect, and it confirmed my suspicion that she was trying to nurture a rivalry with me. She saw me as an easy mark. Even now, when I had her at my mercy.
“Not quite,” I said.
“How do you figure?” she asked, inclining her head toward the hand she had leveled in my direction. She put a bit of light into her palm, but it was weak, and I smiled wickedly.
“Your energy, assuming you used all of it, is likely only back to about fifteen percent.”
That surprised her, as evidenced by the slight raising of her eyebrows, but she recovered quickly enough. “So, you’ve discovered that my powers regenerate. Big deal. Only, your calculations are off. I’m well past—”
“Are you?” I asked and made a show of looking up into the night sky. “I don’t see your friend.”
“What friend?”
“The big yellow one,” I said, and when I looked back down at her, she had dropped all pretense and glared at me with open hostility. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Mission not go exactly how you pictured?”
“You would know,” she returned.
“Fair enough,” I shrugged. “Difference here is, I learn from my mistakes. You, on the other hand…”
Mastermind Page 19
