by Lucas Flint
Scowling, I got to my feet and sipped a Health Drink, which brought my Health back to full and healed my wound, thus lifting the debuff. I briefly looked around at all of the other Heroes and Sidekicks walking around us and wondered why none of them were even trying to help us. It seemed odd to me that I was the only Hero who had bothered to help Hannah, but I pushed such thoughts out of my head for now in order to focus on saving this dang cat.
“Cy,” I said, looking at Cy. “I’m going to need your help.”
“I was waiting for you to ask!” said Cy, stepping forward with a big smile on his face. “What do you need me to do, boss?”
I pointed up at Felix. “Fly up there and get Felix. You can fly with those wings on your back, right?”
“Right,” said Cy, flapping his wings once or twice. “They boost my Flight Powers by ten percent. Should be more than enough time to get up there and save him.”
I nodded, but then said, “Wait, if I let you do this, will it count as me winning the mission or you?”
“You,” said Cy, pointing at me. “Even when a Sidekick completes a mission for you, it counts as your win and so you get all the rewards.”
“Ah,” I said in relief. I’d been a little worried that Cy might get the rewards instead of me, but it was good to know he didn’t. “Okay, then. Get that cat.”
“Sure thing, boss,” said Cy with a thumbs up.
He flapped his wings once and then flew up into the air. He soon stopped a few feet away from Felix, who watched Cy with even more wariness than he had watched me.
“Here, kitty kitty, here, kitty kitty,” said Cy, slowing extending his arms out toward Felix. “Don’t worry, kitty, I won’t hurt you. I just want to get you down nice and safe to your owner who has been worried sick about you. So just take it easy for a second and—”
Felix suddenly sprang toward Cy with a loud yell and landed on his face. Cy screamed like a girl as Felix clawed at his face. With his concentration broken, Cy suddenly fell toward the sidewalk, but Felix leaped off his face back onto his branch and went back to watching us.
Cy landed at my feet with a dull thud. His face was scratched up, his mask torn in several places, but as far as I could tell, he still had both eyeballs and he didn’t seem to be dead, so I guess it evened out.
Hannah giggled. “Silly Felix. You’re supposed to let the nice man take you down from the tree, not claw at his face.”
Felix just purred in response. I was starting to think that Hannah and Felix were in cahoots and that this whole thing was a setup just to troll unsuspecting Heroes like me.
Shaking my head, I said to Cy, “You gonna be okay, Cy?”
“Yeah,” said Cy with a slightly muffled voice, “after my face stops hurting, that is.”
I rolled my eyes and looked back up at Felix. “Okay, cat. One way or another, you are going to come down today and I am going to complete this mission.”
Felix looked at me with an expression that clearly said, Go ahead and try, human.
My next few attempts to save Felix went about as well as my first one. Every time I got close enough to touch him, Felix would either retreat from my grasp or slash at my hands again. I had gotten fast enough to pull my hands away from Felix whenever he did that, but I still fell out of the tree more often than not and found myself in pain anyway.
Although only half an hour had passed since I accepted the mission, it felt like I’d been doing this all day. After I fell out of the tree for the fifth time, I was just about ready to call it quits and find another mission. Even though the mission was supposed to be ‘Easy,’ I had a feeling that that must have been a glitch or even an outright lie meant to trick low-level players like me.
Cy must have been feeling the same way, because when I got up from the sidewalk again and walked over to the tree, he said, “I dunno about this mission, boss. I don’t think ol’ Felix up there is in the mood to come down anytime soon.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Hannah. She was sitting on the steps of a store nearby, a bag of popcorn in her hands. “Of course Felix wants down. He’s afraid of heights.”
“He’s afraid of—?” I looked at Hannah. “Where did you get that popcorn?”
Hannah gestured with her head at the store behind her. “From this store. It’s really good. Want some?”
I was going to say something about how Hannah was treating this like entertainment, but then I just grunted and looked away. Hannah was clearly getting some amusement out of this, but that didn’t matter. As I told Felix, one way or another I was going to get him down. Despite what I was thinking earlier, I was not a quitter. Once I accepted a task, I always saw it to the end long after everyone else would give up. It was both a blessing and a curse, because it was what had helped me graduate the academy in the first place, although it was also the main reason I was struggling with this dumb cat.
There had to be some way to convince Felix to come down. It was pretty clear I wouldn’t be able to touch him with my hands. That meant that climbing this tree was just going to result in more pain. I needed to find a way to convince Felix to climb down the tree of his own accord, but how do I do that?
Could I possibly freeze the tree? If I froze it over, Felix might jump off just to avoid getting caught in the frost. The Ice Man Costume did not seem to have an automatic freezing option, but maybe it was possible to do anyway, like some kind of hidden Power or something.
I walked up to the tree, but instead of climbing, I pressed the palm of my right hand against the thick wooden bark and focused. I wanted to channel Ice Beam, but instead of shooting it as a beam, I wanted it to freeze the moisture in the air around the tree and slowly coat it over with a thick sheet of ice.
At first, nothing happened. I just stood there sort of awkwardly, my hand pressed firmly against the tree, feeling like an idiot. I heard Hannah giggle behind me and heard Cy shift his weight from foot to foot, but I ignored them and focused entirely on freezing the tree.
Then, without warning, I felt coldness channel through my body and out my hand onto the tree bark. At first, it came out bit by bit, slowly freezing over the surface of the tree that my hand covered. But then it started to pick up more and more, Energy flowing out of my hand and rapidly freezing over the tree, starting from the middle where my hand was and going up to the roots below and to the tree branches above.
Felix’s eyes widened as the freezing effect picked up speed, getting closer and closer to him. I thought for a moment that Felix was going to just stay there and get frozen with the tree—that surely would have caused me to fail this mission—but at the last second Felix leaped off the tree, avoiding the freezing effect that covered the branch he had been sitting down upon.
But Felix never even got to touch the ground, because Hannah appeared under him in a flash and caught the fat cat with both arms like a football.
“Felix!” said Hannah, hugging the cat as hard as she could. “Oh, Felix, I am so glad you’re okay! I thought you’d be stuck up in that tree forever, but now you’re down and I’ll never let you go again ever!”
Based on Felix’s expression, I could tell he was already starting to regret jumping off the tree. I just smirked at the cat who had given me and Cy so much trouble, but my smirk was interrupted when a new notification appeared in my vision:
New Power unlocked: Freezing Touch [Level 1]. Touch any physical object and instantly coat it in a thick sheet of frost. Cost: 1 Energy. Cooldown: None.
Whoa. I didn’t realize I could unlock new Powers. I would have to ask Cy about that later.
For now, I dismissed the notification and walked up to Hannah, who was still hugging Felix with the force of a steel grip. “I’m glad to see that Felix is back in your arms safe and sound. Getting him down was a bit more difficult than I thought, but in the end, I managed to do it.”
“Thanks, mister!” said Hannah, looking up at me with a brilliant smile on her face. “I don’t think your name is so lame at all anymore, but it’s stil
l not cool, either.”
“Was that a pu—” I was interrupted by yet another status notification popping up in front of me:
MISSION: Get Felix the cat safely down from this tree
STATUS: Successfully completed!
You saved Felix the cat! Although your methods were a bit unorthodox, you can’t argue with the results.
REWARDS: +1% to Hero Alignment, +1 Trust and +1 Fame, as well as the eternal gratitude of Hannah
Smiling at the rewards, I dismissed the notification and looked at Hannah. “Is there anything else you’d like me to do, Hannah?”
Hannah shook her head. “Nah. Watching you save Felix cured me of my boredom, but it’s time for me and Felix to go home now. Daddy is probably going to get worried if I’m out for much longer and I don’t want to worry Daddy. Thanks again, mister!”
With that, Hannah ran off, still clutching Felix in her arms, who was looking over her shoulder at me with a pleading expression.
I just waved mockingly at the cat as Hannah and Felix disappeared around a corner, but as soon as the two of them disappeared, another notification appeared in my vision:
Congratulations! You have completed your first mission as a Hero. Now that your Fame is at least 1, your reputation automatically upgrades from ‘Unknown’ to ‘Budding Hero.’ Reach 100 Fame to take your reputation to the next level!
Trust +1! Now Civilians are more likely to trust you with important missions they need help with. Keep raising your Trust to gain access to new and better missions!
Reputation with Children has increased! Your reputation with Children has increased from ‘Neutral’ to ‘Friendly.’ Children Civilians are now more likely to ask you for help than Adult Civilians.
Huh. I hadn’t expected my reputation with Children to increase. Heck, I didn’t even know that was possible. I wondered what sort of implications that would have on the game going forward. Perhaps Hannah was more important than I thought.
“Congrats, boss!” said Cy, interrupting my thoughts all of a sudden. “You completed your very first mission! How do you feel?”
“Satisfied,” I said, glancing at Cy as I dismissed these new notifications. “But also ambitious. I want to do more missions, this time missions that actually reward experience. Hero Points are good and all, but I really do need to level up, and fast.”
“No problem, boss,” said Cy. “With your Fame and Trust higher, it should be easier than ever to find better missions!”
“Then what are we waiting for?” I said. “Let’s go complete us some more missions.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cy and I spent the rest of the day alternating between level grinding and completing missions for various Civilians I ran into around Adventure City. The missions were mostly on the level of difficulty as Hannah’s, but somehow far less frustrating. For example, I returned a lady’s stolen purse to her once and another time I stopped some thugs from holding up a cashier at a store.
But frankly, even with my increased Fame and Trust, I didn’t get nearly as many missions as I would have liked. Of the missions that I did get, they were mostly ones that rewarded items, money, or occasionally equipment, but none that offered experience points or Hero Points.
That was where level grinding came in, which I found to be an interesting part of the game.
In some ways, it wasn’t too much different from most MMORPGs. You went and found random enemies to attack. When you defeated them, you got a certain number of experience points and occasionally an item drop or some money.
What this basically translated to was me going around beating up random low level [THUGS] and [CROOKS] I found wandering the streets of Adventure City. It felt a little odd at first, because I had no proof any of them had actually committed any crimes, but it became easier and easier to justify beating them up, because they tended to start the encounters more often than not. I guess the criminal AI was designed to automatically attack all Heroes on sight. At least, that’s the only way I could explain why a bunch of low-level [THUGS] and [CROOKS] constantly picked a fight with me and Cy, fights they never won.
Cy turned out to be much more helpful than I first thought. Although he was weaker than me, he nonetheless provided a good distraction against the random [THUGS] and [CROOKS] we ran into around the City. His high Agility and wind Powers meant he could distract the bad guys while I used my ice Powers to take them out. We made a pretty good team, I will admit, and there were more than a few times where I was sure I was going to die, only for Cy to jump in at the last minute and save me. It definitely convinced me of the benefits of the Sidekick system.
Another thing I discovered about the enemy battle system in this game was that you weren’t actually supposed to ‘kill’ your enemies. Instead, if you were a Hero, you were supposed to hand them over to the local police. Even if there were no police officers in the immediate area, you could still just tie up criminals and then send the police a message with the location of the criminal in question. Cy informed me that the police always came to pick up the criminals. I also learned that this helped raise my reputation with the police from ‘Neutral’ to ‘Friendly,’ although at the moment I didn’t see any in-game benefits from being on the good side of the police. My Freezing Touch Power was particularly handy for subduing Criminals non-lethally.
By the end of the day, I had grown 9 levels, bringing my total level up to 11, and leveled up Scan to Level 2 due to using it so much, which gave me the ability to see the Weak Points of Scanned enemies in combat. Cy had grown 5 levels, bringing him up to level 6. I did not, of course, distribute my Stat and Power Points, being that I wanted to wait until we had a moment to relax before I did anything like that. Although I was starting to define my play style more and more, I didn’t want to leave myself a sitting duck for any Assassin who might want to try their luck with me. I didn’t get any Powers when I reached Level 10, but perhaps Freezing Touch was what I would have gotten if I hadn’t unlocked it early.
Luckily for us, no Assassins tried to sneak up on me and take me out when we weren’t looking. I could only assume that it was because Cy and I kept moving, going from mission to mission and enemy to enemy without too much of a pause in between. We did, however, make sure not to stray too far from the City’s center, because I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable leaving the main zone yet. Nonetheless, I kept a careful eye on the Civilians around us, because I had no idea which ones were normal Civilians who would support me and which ones were secretly Assassins in disguise waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
“Whew,” said Cy as we walked down the narrow alleyway connecting my Base to Main Street. He rolled his shoulders. “What a long day. This is the hardest I’ve had to work in a while.”
For once, I couldn’t blame him. We had worked extremely hard today because I was determined to get my character to a respectable level. I learned from Cy that the level cap for players was 1,000, but that very few players had managed to reach that level despite how long the game had been out. The actual average was somewhere closer to 100, if not lower, which meant I still had a ways go to before I would be anywhere close to average.
“True that,” I said, rubbing my aching back. “But it was good work. And we’re going to go at it even harder tomorrow. We’re not going to stop until we reach Level 100, if even then.”
Cy sighed. “Can’t say I am surprised to hear you say that, but I was kind of hoping we’d get a day off tomorrow. I’m pooped.”
“No time for days off,” I insisted. “I don’t know how strong this Atmosfear guy is or why he wants me dead, but I’m not going to simply sit back and stagnate. I am going to get as powerful as I possibly can so he can’t kill me easily.”
Cy shrugged. “Whatever you say, boss. Personally, I’m just glad we got a good haul of money. How many credits do we have now?”
I checked my Wallet and said, “Just over ten thousand. Remind me to do some shopping tomorrow. Mostly, I want to focus on getting both
of us some new equipment. As well, we’ll probably need to buy some furniture for the Base, because it’s pretty bare at the moment.”
“I love furniture shopping!” said Cy eagerly. “I know this great place on Main Street that sells the most heavenly beds. We should go there and totally check out their selection.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “I like my current bed, but I admit it could be better. But we’ll have to buy other things first, I reckon, like a coffee pot so I don’t have to pay ten credits each time I want to get a cup of joe from our local coffee place.”
“But I like going there,” said Cy, his shoulders slumping. “Okay, mostly I like staring at the pretty waitresses, but you know what I mean.”
I was about to say that I agreed, but then I thought about Sally, my fiancee. She still had no idea I was alive. As far as she knew, I was dead. Cy was right about the waitresses at that place being pretty to look at—not to mention the female players who were all, without exception, drop dead gorgeous—but a part of me felt guilty for looking at other women. I suppose Sally and I were technically no longer going to get married, but maybe if she knew I was still alive …
“Cy?” I said as we walked. “Do you know if it’s possible to talk to people outside of the game?”
“The what?” said Cy.
Forgetting that Cy was technically an NPC—and therefore unaware of the real world—I said, “Are you aware of how Heroes and Villains will sometimes talk about the, er, ‘real world’?”
Cy nodded. “Yeah. I just assumed it was some weird code you guys used to talk among yourselves. Are you telling me there’s something more to it?”
I bit my lower lip. It was obvious at this point that Cy would not be able to tell me if I could somehow message Sally out in the real world, so I said, “Never mind. Let’s just get into the Base and call it a day. I’m tired.”
But when Cy and I entered the Base, I didn’t go to sleep. I told Cy I wanted to stay up a bit longer to figure out my Stat and Power distribution, but in reality, I needed to contact someone who I knew would be able to answer my question. Not Chuck, because he told me I wasn’t allowed to talk to people out of the game and let them know I survived.
