Rebirth Online 3

by Michael James Ploof

  “Game over,” said Frisco, and I looked up in time to see a sword coming down.

  You are Dead!

  I opened my eyes and found Anna standing next to me in ghost form.

  “No!” she yelled and raised her arms defensively. Then she realized that she was already dead, and whatever blow that she was trying to avoid had already fallen upon her. “Oh god that sucked.”

  “We need to regroup,” I said as I scoured the jungle. “And where the hell is Tweak?”

  “I haven’t seen him since the start of the game,” said Anna.

  “Kit’s going to have to get into the fight,” I told her. “Time for the big surprise.”

  Our cooldown reached zero, and we stepped across the threshold from the ghost world and scoured the jungle. We couldn’t see the enemy base, due to the thick foliage, but we could hear the cats in the distance. They were most likely tearing the shit out of our guardian, and if we didn’t do something fast, the Purrrrsian Empire was going to tilt the scales in their favor.

  “Look!” said Anna, and I turned around to see the rest of my girls suddenly appear behind the veil as ghosts.

  “They’ve killed us all,” I said gravely.

  “Not all of us,” said Anna. “Tweak is still out there somewhere.”

  “Yeah, well he better have a good goddamned reason for disappearing.”

  “What’s the plan Loverboy?” Trinity asked as she stepped through the veil.

  “Nanaya, is the cooldown done on your special ability?” I asked the succubus.

  She nodded.

  “Alright, Cecilia, Anna, and Trinity, you’re with us. Stormy and Ember, when you respawn head straight for their base and hit that fucking guardian with everything you’ve got.”

  Nanaya turned into a big white dragon, and the four of us climbed on her back. As we flew over the jungle toward the enemy base, I searched for Tweak, but there was no sign of him anywhere.

  Had Frisco gotten to my ape friend? Was Tweak staying out of the fight like Kit was pretending to so that we would only have five able fighters on the field at once? I didn’t want to believe it, but I couldn’t think of any other reason for his mysterious disappearance.

  The Purrrrsian Empire’s base came into view, and I cringed when I saw our guardian being bombarded with swords, spells, teeth, and claws. He was covered in wild cats, and Frisco and his posse were laying into the angry guardian with everything they had. Already they had burned him down to 30%, making him just about even with the red.

  A warning cry rose to meet us as Nanaya swooped down and unleashed her dragon fire upon the group. The Purrrrsian Empire raised their shielding spells as my girls and I leapt from the back of the dragon. I landed right on Frisco and drove him to the ground. He hit me with a spell that slammed against my enchanted armor and sent me spinning through the air. I landed like a superhero amidst the dragon flame and retaliated with Arcane Lightning. Frisco howled as the flames rose around him and my electrical webs shocked the shit out of him. My girls had engaged the other guild as well, and one on one they might have been able to hold their ground, but the wild cats leapt from our guardian and joined the fray.

  I brought up my Fire Shield and took up my enchanted blade. We were outnumbered and surely doomed, but each one of us was prepared to fight to the death to defend our guardian.

  But then a sound rang out from the jungle that immediately put a smile on my face.

  Tweak was singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” at the top of his lungs, and everyone turned their heads to see him burst from the jungle with nearly a hundred monkeys scampering behind him.

  “Oh fuck!” I heard Frisco groan.

  A second later Kit finally made her betrayal known and emerged from the foliage near the enemy base. She cast her vines gleefully and laughed like a mad scientist as she tangled up the furries.

  The monkeys slammed into the Purrrrsian Empire and the wildcats like a group of stampeding animals that just escaped from a zoo. Soon the red guardian was covered in screeching monkeys, and the Purrrrsian Empire was overwhelmed with the little meddling devils. Their base soon descended into chaos as monkeys and wild cats fought to the death.

  Nanaya landed near the veil where the Purrrrsian Empire guildies were respawning, and she welcomed them back to the battle with a steady stream of white-hot dragon fire. Tweak and his monkeys overwhelmed the wild cats, allowing the girls and I to focus our efforts on the red guardian. We bombarded it with spells as our guardian pounded it with massive crystal fists. Shards flew and the red guardian began to stagger like a drunkard. Its health was now down to 11%, while ours was still hovering around 20%.

  Frisco still had a few tricks up his sleeve, however, and he emerged from the flames five times larger than he had been. I’d seen a similar spell before, and I knew that it would only last a few minutes.

  But a few minutes was an eternity in a battle such as this.

  Frisco leapt on Nanaya, who was now half his size. To my utter horror, six of his guildmates suddenly leapt through the flames five times larger as well. I hit one with a magic bolt, but it didn’t seem to phase the female cat lady in the least.

  “Get the guardian out of here!” I screamed to Tweak.

  He whistled to his monkeys, and they leapt from the enemy guardian and raced toward ours. Kit tangled up a big brown cat man with her vines, and the rest of the girls did what they could to slow them down, but the cats still had their magic. They blasted us from on high, lighting the ground with green flame and filling the air with poisonous fog. Spells streaked by my head as I retaliated with Firestorm, Arcane Lightning, and Scorched Earth, but the Purrrrsian Empire was on the warpath, and I soon fell with my guild mates.

  As I lay there dying, I saw Tweak’s monkeys racing toward the jungle with our guardian body surfing on top of them, and the surreal image made me laugh despite the circumstances.

  I spawned with my guild mates and stepped through the veil with the original line-up. Our guardian had made it back to our base, but so too had the Purrrrsian Empire, and they were still in their gargantuan form. Soon, however, the spells would wear off. All we had to do was keep them off the guardian until they returned to normal.

  “Defend the guardian at all costs!” I bellowed.

  My guild mates issued a war cry and attacked the twenty-five-foot-tall cat people, heedless of the danger. When one of us died, someone else came through the veil to take their place, bombarding the cats with spells or healing the guardian as much as they could before they were killed again.

  I died three times by the time the spell wore off that made Frisco and his guildmates towering giants, and as they began to shrink, a notification appeared on my interface that made me smile.

  Nuclear Thunderclap Cooldown Complete

  “Oh hell yeah,” I said as I swiped it to the side.

  I glanced at our guardian, he still had 10% health left, and the last I had seen, the opposing red was down to 11%. If we were going to win the fight, we were going to have to bring it back to the Purrrrsian Empire’s base. They were keeping their red away, and the only other way to burn theirs down was to leave ours vulnerable and under attack.

  Screw that noise.

  “Duck!” Trinity yelled to me and threw her sword end over end, right at my face. I dropped down as the blade sung by overhead. There was a loud thud, a groan, and I turned to see a white cat hit the ground.

  “Thanks,” I said as she helped me to my feet amidst the chaos.

  Our two guilds were fighting furiously for control of our base, but whenever a Purrrrsian Empire fighter died, it took them nearly a minute to get back across the jungle and into the fight. If we could kill them all, then we could take the fight back to their base.

  Trinity protected me while I conjured Nuclear Thunderclap like a ninja performing sign language and clapped my hands together, aiming the blast at the center of the remaining five Purrrrsian Empire guild mates. The blast was blinding. It knocked me on my ass given that
I had aimed it so close, and when I sat up and peered through the dust, I saw the awe-inspiring mushroom cloud reaching for the sky.

  “Attack!” I commanded my guild mates, and they gave a war cry as we raced toward the jungle.

  When I came out on the other side, I had Tweak, Anna, Trinity, Ember, Kit, and Stormy with me. Our plan was to burst out of the jungle and hit the dying guardian with everything we had, but when the enemy base came into view, their guardian was nowhere in sight.

  “Shit! They must have hidden him in the jungle,” I said as I double-checked with Fire Vision.

  “And here they come!” Anna warned.

  “New plan!” I turned back into the jungle and stopped in a clearing. “Tweak, you think you can get your monkeys on the case?”

  “I’m on it.” He turned and leapt up to the nearest branch and started climbing into the thick canopy.

  “Anna and Kit, you two return to our base and get our guardian’s health up as high as you can. Take him into the jungle and try to hide him from the Purrrrsian Empire. Trinity, Ember, Stormy and me will try to slow them down.”

  Anna and Kit ran off toward our base, and the other girls and I hunkered down and prepared to ambush the Purrrrsian Empire. They had fanned out by the time they got to the jungle, and they were on all fours, which made them an extremely hard target. In addition to that, they were so quick that you really only had one shot at them as they zipped by, completely ignoring us in an attempt to get back to our base. But one of Ember’s traps snagged one of them, and Trinity’s Warrior Charge took one right off its feet. I cast Arcane Lightning, which webbed out and hit three of them, slowing them down and shocking the hell out of them at the same time. They all had very powerful armor, however, and they recovered quickly.

  Three of the cats got through our little ambush, and we were left facing only four. To kill them would be to send them back to their base, but they knew that if they killed us, we would also be sent back to our base, which they didn’t want. They wanted to keep us there fighting while their guild mates burned down our guardian’s health, and that gave us a bit of an advantage. The spells that they cast our way were meant to slow us down, while ours were meant to kill. I was hit by a spell from a druid that rooted me to the ground, but my enchanted sword sliced through the vines with ease, and I scored a Soul Shatter Strike that left him dead at my feet.

  It wasn’t long before we killed them all, but Trinity fell in the process. We pressed their base and met the attack of those who had just spawned, but this time they were out for blood. When the spells started coming, I dropped behind my Fire Shield and weathered the onslaught. Then I heard Tweak’s monkeys begin freaking out in the jungle to the north.

  The Purrrrsian Army stopped halfway to the jungle; they had heard it too.

  They abandoned us and raced into the jungle to the north, and I urged my remaining guild mates to follow. Ember and Stormy were melee fighters, and their strength and speed were way higher than mine, so it wasn’t long before they had disappeared into the jungle ahead of me.

  I leapt over giant anacondas, ducked below massive spider webs, and avoided the snapping teeth of crocodiles that sprang from the shallow waters as I passed. The monkeys were still going ape shit, but it wasn’t easy to pinpoint their location. It wasn’t until a flare exploded in the sky to my left that I knew exactly where they were. Spells began to flash on the ground below the flare, and when I burst through a thick carpet of ferns, I found my guildmates blasting the shit out of the enemy guardian.

  The Purrrrsian Empire was there in full force as well, however, and they were fighting furiously to defend. But the red was already down to 3%.

  To my surprise, it had already been fifteen minutes since I last cast Nuclear Thunderclap, and when the notification informing me that the cooldown was over popped up on my interface, I didn’t hesitate.

  I unleashed the spell, aiming right at the red guardian’s chest. The explosion sent the Purrrrsian Empire cats one-hundred feet in the air, and the mushroom cloud seemed to be coming right out of the red guardian’s head.

  I roared like an animal that had just tasted first blood, but then the guardian suddenly changed color, and I stared slack-jawed at our poor blue.

  Chapter 18

  “Ohhh nooo,” I groaned when I realized the ruse.

  Somehow, Frisco and his clever cats had changed the color of our guardian, and not only that, but they had also managed to cast a spell on it that would make it susceptible to friendly fire.

  “Stop! That’s our guardian!” Kit yelled, and she had to grab Trinity with vines and yank her back.

  The beautiful blonde warrior had been in a blood rage, hacking and stabbing the legs of our smoldering guardian.

  “Tweak!” I yelled. “What the fuck? Your monkeys found the wrong guardian!”

  “I don’t know man, y’all thought it was the red one too,” he said, trying to catch his breath.

  We all stood around our weakened, black and blue guardian. Its health was down to 2%, and it wouldn’t take much for the Purrrrsian Empire to finish it off. They had all landed somewhere after my Nuclear Thunderclap, and I knew that given the radius of the blast, they were likely now surrounding us.

  “We’re screwed,” said Ember as she twirled her daggers and scoured the jungle.

  “We need to find their guardian,” Anna reminded us all.

  “They’re going to attack at any minute,” Tweak put in.

  I spun quick circles, searching the jungle, searching my mind for a way out. Frisco had us. That final ruse had been the nail in our coffin. There was no way we were going to be able to locate the red, while at the same time defending our own.

  As I contemplated how fucked we were, I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before; all my guild mates besides Cecilia were there with me. That meant that we had 8 players on the battlefield, which wasn’t possible.

  I looked at each of them carefully as they frantically tried to figure out what to do. They questioned me as I stared at them, and they became angry when I said nothing. Tweak was throwing up his arms, Kit was biting her claws and nearly crying, Trinity was sharpening her blade determinately, Anna was buffing us all with wards and telling us to remain calm, Ember danced on her toes, ready, while Nanaya floated above us all and held a glowing red orb in each hand, ready to obliterate the first furry she saw, but Stormy was simply standing there and watching everyone talk.

  She wasn’t dancing on her toes, eager for battle like she should have been, and she wasn’t wearing any expression that I had ever seen her wear. Stormy had a blank look in her eye, and when hers met mine, I realized that I had seen that blank stare before.

  Without telling anyone what I had discovered, I unsheathed my enchanted blade, walked calmly toward Stormy, then quickly thrust my sword into her heart.

  My guild mates cried out in shock and horror, but then Stormy let out a guttural howl of pain that sounded exactly like a guardian. I jumped back as the illusion of Stormy exploded, and the towering guardian burst to full height with my sword still stuck in its chest.

  Its health read 0.09 %, and I grinned at my guild mates.

  As one, we attacked the red guardian with spells and blades, war hammers and curses, and the gargantuan monster finally crashed to the ground.

  “Winner! Heavy Metal Thunder!” the elven announcer cried out.

  Frisco and his guild mates reached the clearing just as the battlefield was beginning to disappear. I cheered and danced with my guild mates as the Purrrrsian Empire shook their heads, and the crowd chanted our name.

  “Holy shit, we won!” Anna cried.

  Cecilia joined us from our base and met us in the middle of the sand, leaping into our arms and crying with joy.

  “What a battle,” said the wizard who was announcing with the elf. “Ruse upon ruse, spells the likes of which have never been seen, and two guilds with hearts of gold.”

  “Right you are,” said the elf. “But only one guild can
continue to the final battle, and that guild is Heavy Metal Thunder. By the gods, what a show Sam and his girls put on today…”

  I turned from the large looking glass above when I heard someone approaching, and I found Frisco standing behind me with his hand out.

  “Hell of a fight,” he said with a grin.

  “You guys really gave us a run for our money,” I said.

  He nodded with a half-smile. “We almost had you. How the hell did you know that we had made our guardian look like Stormy?”

  “Including Stormy, there were eight of us on the battlefield,” I explained.

  “Ah,” he said. “And she wasn’t acting like herself. Damnit you’re a clever son of a bitch.”

  “I get lucky once in a while,” I said with a wink.

  “Well, if we had to lose, I’m glad it was against you guys,” Frisco said with a smile.

  I raised Frisco’s hand with mine and turned to the crowd, who cheered the furries and began chanting their name.

  The afterparty at Cecilia’s place was insane, but we all snuck out after only a few hours. There were way too many people trying to buy us drinks, and although the alcohol in Rebirth Online didn’t actually get you drunk, the programs altered perception in just the same way as if it was real, and the hangovers were nothing to sneeze at.

  I wanted us all to be in perfect form tomorrow, so we called it a day and returned to our tower in the Beartooth Mountains. Tweak brought a couple furries along with him and bade me a goodnight with a grin as he led them to his room, and the girls and I retired to our bedroom for a little party of our own. We leveled, of course, and passed out in each other’s arms.

  I didn’t remember my dreams in the morning, but I knew that I had slept like a baby. The ladies awoke with a smile on their faces, eager to start the day. They practically chased each other out of bed and raced to the kitchen, and I followed close behind, tapping on my interface to dress as I went.