“‘We’?” Jane asked confusedly, “Surely you mean you.”
“I mean ‘we’, and don’t call me Shirley.” I said, just barely managing to maintain a stone-faced expression, “As far as I’m concerned, if I hadn’t have met you two, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity.”
“Sam definitely,” Jane huffed, her eyes still darting between Sam and me, “but me? What did I do?”
“You make me happy,” I replied with a shrug, “that means the world to me.”
Jane simply stared at me for a little while, trying and failing to make words as her tears welled up, before sniffing hard and rubbing her eyes, “That is just about the lamest thing I’ve ever heard,” she laughed meekly, refusing to make eye-contact as she did, “but no, I can’t just take your money.”
“You’re not taking my money,” I said, smiling broadly, “you’re sharing our money. Seriously, do you think I have a hope in Hell of ever spending twelve million dollars?”
“With the way you live, definitely not,” Sam chuckled, having apparently caught a secondhand case of happy tears, “can we hurry up and get in the game now, please? Wouldn’t want to piss Sergei off.”
“That guy couldn’t get pissed off with me if he tried,” I laughed, “definitely though, meet you guys in there.”
“You’re not coming now?” Jane asked as she got to her feet, “We kind of need you.”
“I won’t be two seconds,” I replied, stepping back towards the door, “I just figure I should munch on an apple or something in case it runs a little late.”
Jane’s brow furrowed at that, but she quickly wiped that away and strode to me, “Just don’t take too long,” she sighed, wrapping her arms around my neck, “I can’t think of anything worse than getting trapped in some longwinded conversation with that big ole Russian again.”
“I promise,” I chuckled before giving her a quick kiss, “see you in a second.”
“You better!” Sam called from the other end of the apartment, having started stripping long before she got near the bedroom.
“See you soon.” Jane said before giving me another, slightly longer kiss.
“Definitely.” I replied as we finally broke apart and I was free to leave the apartment, “Make sure you guys don’t leave without me.”
Jane smiled at that and leaned against the doorframe with a cute grin, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I felt bad lying to Jane and Sam, mostly because I was sure if anyone could understand my anxiety about going back into the game, it was them, but I didn’t want to put that on them.
On top of that, the last thing I wanted to do was start complaining about the way my in-game life was going after not only kicking the snot out of the halos but also becoming a damn millionaire.
It’s hard to explain in retrospect, but it was like the better things went and the more responsibility I felt was being lobbed onto me the more I felt like I was on the verge of some kind of sitcom-style, breathing into a brown paper bag panic attack.
I wanted to be strong, I wanted to power through it, and I was sure I’d be able to with time as I had in the past, but at the time, like every other section of my life where I’d gone through a depressive bout, I felt completely powerless.
“You’re sorted for life,” I muttered to myself as I paced my kitchen, “you’re on the verge of winning back the city, and you have two absolutely amazing women in your life. Pull your shit together…”
And that’s when I found an override to my stress.
The girls.
I wasn’t going into the game to try and force myself to have fun, I was doing it for them.
There was a part of me that knew that wasn’t true and that the girls would gladly skip out on the game to take all the time in the world to talk to me, but I knew that wouldn’t fix anything.
No, I was going to take back San Francisco for Jane and Sam and my mildly crippling depression was going to go fuck itself.
It was a flawed plan, but at least it was something.
37
Dropping into Echo was rough for the first time in a while, not because of anything to do with me, but because I was almost tackled by an Orc who happened to be rushing past where I spawned in.
I’d have probably apologized or, at the very least, made sure he was okay, but by the time I’d gathered myself enough to do so the Orc had already gotten well out of earshot.
That wasn’t an isolated incident either, in fact I nearly got collected at least a dozen more times on my way to the parade grounds where I found Sergei.
“Buck!” the LMG-wielding Orc laughed as I approached him, dodging a heavily armed group of Demons as I did, “You’re late.”
“Am I though?” I replied with a smirk before taking a quick look around, “Have you seen the girls?”
“Yes, they’re downstairs getting ready for deployment,” Sergei said as he clapped me on the shoulder, revealing to me that my jacket and shirt were back in mint condition, and started guiding me away at a steady clip, “everything’s loaded up and ready to go, we’re just waiting on your signal.”
“Brilliant,” I chuckled approvingly, “I trust that we’ve got warding on the APCs and such?”
“Warding, paneling, you name it.” Sergei laughed while I snuck a quick look at the Old One who, in the time I’d been gone, had lowered himself into the water enough that only the top of his head was visible, “This entire day has been dedicated to making sure everything is ready to face the mist. We even built canopies for the speedboats!”
“I’ll have to see them,” I said with a smile as we headed down towards the dock, “do we know what’s waiting out in the water?”
“Nothing good,” Sergei replied concernedly, “but we’re sure most if not all of us will make it across.”
“And the plan for once we get there?” I asked.
“At this time, we think it would be best to find somewhere to lay low in the city,” Sergei said, “of course, if you want to attack-”
“Trust me, I’m more than happy to focus on getting a solid foothold in the city before wildly flailing,” I interjected as we reached a large open doorway that had people running in and out, “we don’t just want to pick this fight, we want to win it.”
“Truer words have never been spoken.” Jane said from behind me, making both Sergei and I stop in our tracks so she could catch up, “You okay? You took a little longer than I thought you would.”
“Time’s different in here, I’m sure it’s just that.” I replied, trying to cover my tracks as we made our way into a long, military base-looking corridor, “Where’s Sam?”
“She’s in one of the APCs already,” Jane said with a smile, “she’s even saved us seats.”
“In which case, I should let you two go so I can get to my team.” Sergei chimed in, finally taking his hand off my shoulder, before running off ahead of us, “See you on the other side.”
“You too!” I called after him, knowing he probably couldn’t hear me over the cacophony of echoing footsteps and rushed voices, “I figured everyone would already be loaded up and waiting for me.”
“There were a few people like that, but most of us decided that we wanted to be extra, extra ready.” Jane explained before bumping me lovingly with her shoulder, “You sure you’re okay though?”
“Definitely.” I replied, genuinely feeling better being back in Echo, “Are you? We did just leave a big fat check sitting in my crappy glove compartment.”
“I can’t think of anywhere safer,” Jane said with a smile, “I mean, no one in their right mind is going to try and steal your car.”
“Oh really?” I scoffed, faking offence.
“Yeah,” Jane laughed, “I mean, it’s not exactly the type of car that people would do prison time for, is it?”
“Careful, keep going like that and I’m going to end up spending all that money we got on new cars.” I joked.
“What, you going to open a dealership or something?” Jane asked
mockingly before as we got into a large open area where the APCs had been parked, “You’re sure we’re ready for this?”
“Are you kidding?” I laughed as I looked around at the hangar bay’s worth of military vehicles, “With an army like this, I reckon we could invade Canada.”
“We’re not invading Canada though, are we?” Jane scoffed before leading me towards what I guessed was our ride, “No, we’re invading a city of Angels and Elves who all have raging hate boners for us, and that’s only after we get through the Lovecraftian nightmare we’ve put between them and us.”
“Eh,” I replied with a shrug, “I’m sure the warding’ll hold, and I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll be able to purge the halos out of our city, especially after that Lovecraftian nightmare you mentioned.”
“You two going to gab all day or are you going to get your asses on the bus?” Sam called from the side door of the APC we were approaching.
“Bus?” I asked curiously as I climbed in through the open door and saw we were at capacity with Orcs and Demons, “Why ‘bus’?”
“It’s not a tank and ‘APC’ gets hard to say after a while.” Sam replied before gesturing to three empty seats, one of which had a belt with six frag grenades, a small-ish carbine, and two extra mags, “Those are yours, by the way. Figured you’d forget to hit the armory on your way over.”
“Forgetting and not knowing I was supposed to are two completely different things,” I said confidently as I got geared up, “we all feel good today?”
I was met with a few nods from the other Damned Legion boys and girls, but for the most part they just sat there strapped into their seats with panic in their eyes.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked, taking a seat.
“We’re riding in the vanguard,” Sam explained, shaking her head with disappointment, “apparently for these sissies, that means they drew the short straw.”
“In their defense, I’ve heard things are pretty messed up once you get out into the water.” Jane said, “Apparently one of Sergei’s boys went out and found this baby octopus thing, wanted to keep it as a pet. Wasn’t on land for more than five minutes before the thing was double the size of an Orc and had three times the proclivity for violence.”
“Ah, makes sense.” was all I could get out as I too, once again, started to worry about our chances of making it across the bay.
“We’ll be fine though,” Jane continued upon noticing my concern, “I looked up the info dump the devs did after we woke up the Old One and it looks like the main thing we’ll have to look out for on our way over is madness.”
“Madness?” Sam asked before I got the chance, “What are you talking about?”
“Well, if you spend too much time in the mist with the creatures and they don’t kill you, you go a bit… loopy.” Jane explained, “There’re spells to reverse it, but considering we’re all covered in guns and grenades, I think it’d be best if we just didn’t go crazy.”
“Won’t the warding protect us?” I asked as a Dwarf came into the APC, shut the door behind him, and went for the driver’s seat.
“It should for a while,” Jane replied unconvincingly, “but again, we’ll be fine. Push comes to shove, I’ll work my magic and boost the warding.”
“Shouldn’t you just do that from the jump?” Sam suggested right before the Dwarf started the engine with a rumble so intense it shook the whole vehicle for a solid ten seconds.
“If I do that I’ll end up draining myself miles from the city,” Jane sighed with just a twinge of disappointment, “on the plus side, when we do take the city, I’ll probably be able to do some more of my side quest-y stuff and have the ability to do that sort of thing indefinitely.”
“Alright, boys and girls,” the clearly southern Dwarf said through the APC’s speakers, “my name is Boris and I’ll be your driver this evening. We’re looking at some choppy waves with a forecast of squid monsters, so please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times.”
“Here we go,” Sam practically squeaked, knocking her knuckles together as she did, “once more unto the breach.”
“Yeah, aha,” I chuckled uncertainly, “straight into the mouth of madness…”
38
The first few minutes of cruising across the water wasn’t all that bad, it was actually kind of relaxing, though once we started to creep into the mist things started to get a little concerning.
Not only were we surrounded by unearthly shrieks and guttural growls, but it was obvious that whatever was waiting outside was testing our defenses, bashing their bodies into and scraping their claws against our four walls.
To make matters worse, we were forced to slow down as several of our convoy had had some kind of mechanical failure and had been reduced to a lazy crawl through the water.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, we’d lost contact with two of the APCs and three boats.
No screams, no cries for help, nothing.
They were sounding off and then they weren’t.
On top of all that, there wasn’t a single one of us in our barely protective tin can that was willing to strike up any sort of substantial conversation.
Instead we chose to distract ourselves by checking over our weapons and listening for any sign that we were about to get dragged to the murky depths.
“How we looking, Gimli?” I asked our Dwarf driver.
“My name’s Millwood, you dildo,” the Dwarf nervously laughed, “and yeah, not long. If I’m being totally honest, I think if I could just open her up a bit, I’d have us on land in the next fifteen seconds.”
“We can’t ditch the rest of the convoy,” Sam replied distractedly, “otherwise we’re the dicks who, well, ditched the convoy.”
“I know, I know,” Millwood grumbled, “I’m just really not in the mood to be eaten by squid people.”
“Could’ve stayed behind.” Jane said with a shrug.
“Then I would’ve been the pussy who, well, stayed behind.” Millwood replied, trying and failing to affect a girly, Sam-like voice, “Besides, I’m not missing out on the big finale.”
“What big finale?” I scoffed amusedly, “From where I’m sitting, it’s going to be more like Tiananmen Square than Khe Sanh.”
“Oh, I’m sure the halos’ll find a way to surprise us.” Millwood chuckled, “Hell, I remember when those beams came down, I figured they were setting up some kind of shield for us from you.”
“Let me guess, you chucked an Independence Day and stood on a roof or something to look at the pretty lights?” I lightheartedly mocked.
“You’re not that far off, actually.” Millwood admitted with just the tiniest twinge of embarrassment in his voice, “My point is that the halos are conniving fuckers, and they’ve already shown a willingness to mega smite innocent bystanders.”
“I guarantee they would’ve blown us out of the water if they could do anything of that magnitude,” I replied confidently, “doesn’t make any sense to let us get onto the mainland where they run the risk of getti-”
That’s when, out of nowhere, something pierced the armor near the back right side.
It looked like some kind of bony talon, but it was honestly kind of hard to tell given the fact that it had gone through the back of one of the Demons before pulling him from his seat and tearing him in half as the claw tore a long hole through the armor.
“Gun it.” I ordered flatly without taking my eyes off the massive hole and the water that was lapping through it.
“What about the rest of the convoy?” Millwood asked, mostly unaware of what had just happened behind him.
“At this point we’re either gonna get separated because we make it or because we get dragged to the bottom of the bay, and I know which option I’d choose.” I explained as calmly as I could before clearing my throat, “Now, get us the fuck out of here.”
“Right away, boss.” the Dwarf replied bringing us up to full speed and picking up his walkie, “This is Red Six, we’re ma
king a mad dash for the finish line, boys. Over.”
“Copy, Red Six.” came the crackly reply through the speakers as we were hit again, resulting in two disconcerting banging sounds, “Make sure those VIPs get to shore safe and sound. Over and out.”
“Alright, everyone,” Millwood said, peeking over his shoulder as we carved our way through the water, “I’m goin’ to suggest y’all get up on your feet and hold onto something, this is gonna get bumpy.”
“Shouldn’t we stay seated?” Sam asked while the others in the APC went ahead and followed our driver’s suggestion.
“Normally, yes,” Millwood replied, “but those things definitely have our scent now, so I reckon you’re going to want to be able to bail out and make a run for it ASAFP. Now, judging from this doohickey up here, we’ve lost most of our tires, which means there’s a good chance we’re not going to be able to make it all the way up the boat ramp.”
“Which means..?” Jane trailed off once we were all standing.
“Which means you’ll have to get the Hell out while I do my best to accelerate on the spot and not slide right back into the water.” Millwood grunted as we hit the ramp, making two of our guys fall over in the process, “Out, now!”
Without wasting another second, Jane and Sam burst out through the side door, filling the cabin with the shrieks of the monsters and the wheels grinding against the concrete ramp.
“Go ahead,” I shouted as a Demon went and stopped by the door, “I’ve got to tighten this fuckin’ thing!”
“Thanks, bos-” the poor bastard managed to get out right before a tentacle wrapped around his midsection and ripped him out.
Picking up on the fact that the side door was as good as a death sentence, the rest of the guys smashed a button at the back, causing the back section to drop into the water like a ramp while I continued to struggle with the grenade belt around my shoulder.
“I don’t want to overstep my boundaries or anything,” Millwood called out, “but if you don’t get the fuck out of here now, I’m gonna eat you myself!”
Echo Online 2 Page 18
