Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “I get that you might be a bit worried,” Paul interjected as he apparently noticed how reprehensive I was being toward the idea of sharing a community again, “but I promise we were both just as screwed as you were.”

  ‘Ha!’ my distrustful brain shouted, ‘Exactly what a low down, dirty deceiver would say!’

  “Yeah Zo,” Chad said in what sounded a little too close to begging for my comfort, “not like we’re exactly armed or anything.”

  “But what about the ute?” I asked, thinking that I’d successfully tripped them up, “What, you just find that lying about?”

  “Actually…” Paul trailed off as he shared an embarrassed look with Chad, “we kinda, sorta…”

  “Ugh, we waited in some bushes and waited for some dude to put the spare tyre on and stole it out from under him when he went to get a new belt.”

  And that’s when I understood the embarrassment, “It’s proper broken now, isn’t it?”

  “Unless you’ve got an engine, yeah, we kinda broke it crashin’ into the rex.”

  There it was, the reason to trust them.

  Their last thing they had of value, the only thing that could keep them alive, just got spent saving my stupid arse.

  “You’re in.” I said with a confident nod.

  “Yeah?” the guys replied in unison.

  “You betcha, send through a request and I’ll approve it.”

  Paul, tired of seeming so nice and helpless, decided that it was time for him to work in one of his classic jabs, “Fina-fucking-ly. Thought your bitter arse was gonna leave us for dead.”

  “Careful, still might.” I joked as best as I could.

  Gable_1337 has been added to your community

  U_MaaD has been added to your community

  Community Population: 8/10

  Build more beds to make more room for your citizens

  Looks like you’ve gone ahead and lured some real life people into your little community, isn’t that just dandy? Now you have some backup for when your tired citizens finally rage against your tyrannical reign. Fun with friends!

  Would you like to name your community?

  “Okay, first order of business, I need help naming this place. Any suggestions?”

  Paul and Chad looked at each other and shrugged, “Boobland?”

  “Don’t be crass.” I said as seriously as I could.

  “Already thought of that one, eh?”

  “…Yeah. But that doesn’t make you any less gross.” I said before starting toward the cabin, “Come on, we’ve gotta be able to think of something that’s at least mildly classy. You did English lit Chad, surely you’ve got something.”

  “Uh, I did an intro to modern English, not ‘City Naming 101’. Why not Paul? He did history, right?”

  I could almost feel Paul’s eyes roll at the memory of our shared history class, “Same thing as your English lit thing dude, just needed it for the credits.”

  “How about ‘Zoey’s Fighters’?” I asked without really thinking.

  “‘Zoey’s Fighters’? We goin’ bandit?”

  I shrugged and pushed open the door, “Not necessarily, but not not necessarily. Seriously, why not? How many times have we been attacked by a random horde of a-holes only to just push them off with sheer luck?”

  “So, what? We start goin’ door-to-door demanding fealty?”

  “Heh, may as well as call ourselves ‘Negan’s Bunch’.”

  “I’m serious,” I butted in before Chad and Paul’s suggestions devolved to the point of ‘Boobland’ again, “why don’t we go full paramilitary style? We build an underground bunker here, expand as we see fit, and not only push back invaders but also have the firepower to take the fight to them.”

  “I dunno…” Paul said as we surrounded the crate, our citizens still hiding against the wall after the t-rex attack, “Seems kind of aggressive, don’t you think that’ll draw unwanted attention?”

  I let out a little laugh and smiled, “Dude, my life is unwanted attention, at least here I can shoot ‘em.”

  Chad let out an amused snort and looked over to me, “I told you to stop wearing that shirt the second you hit puberty. God bless you honey, but you gotta be the one to choose whether or not you conceal your powers.”

  “God? I disagree, I just reckon instead of losing my metabolism altogether it started funnelling into my boo-”

  “Can we just open the crate already!?” Paul shouted with equal parts frustration and excitement.

  “Alright, alright. Settle down there.” I laughed as grabbed the lid of the crate and lifted it open, bathing all three of us and most of the cabin in a brilliant golden glow, “It’s not like it… Whoa…”

  “It’s…”

  “It’s…”

  What? Wouldn’t be a MacGuffin if I told you.

  FRAGGED 2

  Chapter One

  “See? What did I tell you? Easy as dancing.”

  “What the Hell do you mean ‘Easy as dancing’!? You almost got us killed!”

  “Hey, maybe we should all just calm do-

  “If you tell me to calm down I swear on sweet Jerusalem I will end you.”

  Bit confusing there, huh? Bet you’re wondering what got us to that point, or maybe you’re just trying to figure out who was saying what, I don’t know, I’m not a bloody mind reader.

  Anyway, to get you to that point I’m gonna have to go back about half-an-hour to just after I’d stored away what I’d found in the Gold crate in an undisclosed location.

  “I still can’t believe you refuse to let us know where you’re hiding it.” Paul moaned from inside the cabin, “What if we want to see it again?”

  “I’m good, thanks,” Chad said with a little laugh, “I reckon if I looked at it for more than a few seconds my face would melt off Raiders style.”

  I was glad to have Chad there, he’d always been a pretty great voice of reason, however I did find myself kinda craving some conflict.

  Not in a ‘I’m going to start shooting my friends’ way, it was just that I wanted to get a few more scalps for my collection, the body that had been tossed aside by the t-rex proving to be a right bitch to find.

  “You know I love you guys,” I called over as I started searching through the tall grass surrounding the cabin, “but I went through Hell to get that thing.”

  “We scared the t-rex off though, and we broke our ute in the process.”

  I decided that there was no winning with him after that and went about my searching in silence, leaving Chad and Paul to sort each other out.

  “Found you, you bastard.” I muttered as I crouched down next to the terribly mutilated corpse and started scrolling through his inventory for something salvageable.

  And then I saw something that just about made me cry.

  +3 Box of Fifty .357:

  Description: .357, now they’re some fun. Versatile, dangerous, and much more manageable than their bigger brother the .44, don’t let that fool you though, they’ll still put a man down in nothing flat. It’s gonna be hilarious when someone steals these from you.

  +1 Player Scalp

  I quickly went about loading up my rifle, the animation for the tubular magazine giving me no small amount of joy as the bullets slid in one after the other and I was left holding a proper gun.

  “Either of you guys have a hacksaw?” I asked as I happily made my way back toward the cabin.

  “I suppose this means we can come out now?” Paul replied somewhat bitterly.

  “Chad can,” I mocked, “you keep dealing with the citizens.”

  “Sucks to be you.” Chad said as he came out, leaving Paul alone with his inability to pick up on sarcasm.

  “They just keep saying hello to each other and screaming about clothes…”

  “What’s up?” Chad asked after having a little laugh at Paul.

  “A hacksaw, do you have one? I think I wanna chop this bad boy down a bit so it’s more effectiv…” I trailed off as I noticed
that Chad clearly wasn’t buying a word of what I was saying, “Okay, fine, I wanna make it sit nicely on my thigh, alright?”

  “Hey, I’m not one to judge when it comes to liking pretty things. And no, I don’t, but I reckon if we get to work scrapping the ute we’ll be able to make one.”

  I thought about diverting our precious man-hours to something that would literally only benefit me for a solid ten seconds before begrudgingly sighing and shaking my head, “Nah… we’ve got more important stuff to do. You guys have axes?”

  “You bet your sweet arse we do, three each for safety, how come?”

  “Because I need you and the Js to start cutting down trees.”

  Chad raised his eyebrow and looked around at the lush forest that surrounded us, “I don’t think that’s gonna be all that hard.”

  I shook my head and pointed in the direction of the road, “I need you to grab it from over on the other side of the forest. The last thing I need is for us to have zero foliage cover.”

  “Alright, sounds easy enough. Should I get to work making axes for the Js?”

  “That’d be great, thanks. Paul?”

  “Yeah?”

  I rolled my eyes at how obstinate he was being, something I’d found myself doing far more often in RL.

  “Just get out here would you? I’ve got a job for you.”

  There was a whole lot more grumbling than I’d appreciate, but Paul did eventually come out, looking everywhere but at me and giving me plenty of reason to inflict upon him my job.

  “You’re gonna look after the women.”

  “What? While Chad’s out chopping wood and exploring I’m supposed to just sit around here?”

  “Of course not! You’re also gonna collect a bunch of plant fibres and start making pants, shoes, and shirts. Our community’s gonna need clothes.”

  Paul didn’t seem overly impressed with the task set for him, but at the same time he didn’t seem like he was quite prepared to start kicking up a fuss about it either.

  “Sounds good to me, oh captain, my captain.”

  “That’s what I like to hear, now get a move on.”

  See, I enjoyed that. Even though Paul was obviously pissed, he was still easy enough to tell what to do.

  That human element of Thren really did make a difference when it came down to it, and all of a sudden I was in a position where I could go out, do what I needed to do, and come back to a cabin full of wood and be able to get started with building more houses.

  As I said though, the plan was to go underground, which meant that we needed iron, stone, as well as a few more women to fill in the spots of specialist hunter, engineer, and builder.

  “I sure hope those lemons do their job…”

  Chapter Two

  +20 Feathers:

  Description: Bringing one of these into the bedroom is a kink, bringing the whole chicken is a perversion.

  Removed: 20 Feathers, 10 Large Sticks (Blunt)

  Crafted: +20 Simple Arrows

  Crafting Skill: 3/100

  Level Progression: 100/100

  Level Up!

  Special Trait Point Awarded!

  Level Progression: 0/150

  Look at that! You survived long enough to get a single Level Up, that must’ve been really hard what with your whole low IQ thing. I know that we’re not supposed to talk about it, but I think that it’s important that we don’t ignore it, that way you can start to grow as the sub-human you are. Anyway, use that Special Trait Point of yours to boost yourself in new and creative ways so that the competition has even less of a chance going up against you. Sounds a lot like cheating, doesn’t it?

  Removed: 3 Small Rocks, Large Stick (Blunt)

  Crafted: Simple Pickaxe:

  Durability: 100/100

  Damage: 20

  Description: Great for mining those hard to get minerals like… iron? You couldn’t get iron without this thing? I could probably get iron with my bare hands if you gave me a few minutes.

  “Right,” I remarked as I looked around at the unfamiliar section of forest I found myself in, the nest I’d been crouched over for the past few minutes disappearing in a poof of small feathers and dust, “where am I going to find an iron deposit…”

  The obvious solution was to dig, you know, like a smart person, however there had been talks in a patch note about three weeks prior about some kind of huge burrowing creature that had a habit of catching unlucky miners and… well, they weren’t giving them snack cakes.

  ‘But why would you want your Home Base to be underground if there’s a monster down there?’ you may ask, and to that I’d have to point to another section in the patch notes that mentioned that the creature was unable to enter community territories.

  I’m guessing that that had something to do with the fact that you could tame and domesticate most every creature in Thren, and the idea that someone could own a giant mole or Dune style sandworm wouldn’t have sat well with the player base.

  That or they were lying to us in one or both of those notes…

  Sometimes I really hated the developers.

  Anyway, I set about walking with my bow equipped, figuring that those hundred or so .357s would disappear pretty damn quick if I wasn’t careful.

  Ten full minutes went by with no luck, Hell, half the time I was having trouble just finding rocks to thwack and collect, but as the realities of night started to set in I noticed something.

  It was dim at first, barely brighter than an ember, but as I crept my way through the fast darkening forest a cabin not unlike mine came into view.

  “Fresh spawn…” I muttered to myself as I stayed crouched in the shadows of the idiots dozen or so torches he’d planted around his Home Base.

  Great way to scare off predators, especially Rabids, less so for players.

  My first thought was to leave him to his devices, someone else would probably come along any minute looking for some freshie blood, but then a slightly more… twisted idea came to mind when I saw him.

  Satan’s_LittleHelper, or more likely some kid named Barry, was walking toward his little home with a pickaxe over his shoulder, and for some reason that immediately made me turn ravenous.

  “Like a rat in a trap.”

  Chapter Three

  I waited for my unsuspecting victim to get inside before I started going to work with my plan to freak him out as much as possible before butchering him.

  Sadistic? Yes.

  Fun? Also yes.

  Maybe it’s people like me that make society think that gaming corrupts and desensitises children…

  Meh, it’s better than doing heroin under a bridge.

  My arrow knocked without issue, but when I took aim I noticed that I’d forgotten to do something important.

  “Food.” I cursed as my vision blurred and my aim swayed away from the torches.

  I spent a few seconds grumbling and growling as I looked around for anything that could provide me with my much needed sustenance in vain.

  I felt another tantrum coming on but successfully managed to stave it off with the knowledge that I still had the element of surprise with Little Helper.

  “You got this,” I assured myself as I put my bow away and equipped my small knife, “you got this.”

  It’s funny how our brain’s work, isn’t it? For instance, the thought that perhaps I should wait until after I’d found something to eat didn’t occur to me until I’d already spent a solid five minutes travelling the fifteen feet toward Little Helper’s cabin.

  Invading another person’s Home Base are we? Well that doesn’t seem very nice… or smart for that matter, do you really think you have what it takes to take someone down on their home turf? Or your home turf? Or if they were tied to a chair and you had a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. Seriously, you have the success rate of a Bond villain. Just give up and go play in Microsoft Paint.

  I pushed away my feelings of shame as I prepared myself for a fight just outside the door, “You’re
fine, you’re fine. You got this.”

  I don’t know whether it was the idea of going killer or simply the fear that I wouldn’t be able to pull off a real bout, but something about attacking the guy didn’t seem right.

  “I’ll just-oh… shit.” I said as the cabin’s door swung open to reveal a very concerned player.

  We stood staring at each other for a few seconds after that, him with his pickaxe and plant fibre clothing, me with my knife and real clothes.

  He decided he’d like to take those odds, managing a big ol’ swing that just barely missed me as I jumped backwards.

  His weapon certainly had the reach that mine didn’t, which meant that outside I was basically nothing more than a stray chicken to his hungry fox.

  “Hey, he-hey!” I shouted as I dodged another mistimed swing, “Maybe we could be reasonable about this?”

  “You tried to kill me!” Little Helper squeaked out with prepubescent rage.

  “In my defence I was only going to kill you a little bi-shit!” I growled as one of dipshit’s hits managed to stick, the pickaxe jamming firmly in my side before getting reefed out and creating a nice blood fountain courtesy of my ruptured spleen.

  HEALTH: 78/100

  Well would you look at that, you’re bleeding out! How exciting for you! The good news is that I’m gonna go ahead and get comfy as you start to grow fainter and fainter until you collapse in a pile of your own blood. Or you could go ahead and find a first aid kit or a bandage and ruin all my fun, but that’d be mighty selfish of you.

  In the time it had taken me to read over the sarcastic text I’d dodged another half dozen attacks and watched as my health started to drift into the mid-sixties.

  I was right about to give up when I saw my window, him charging for me with a heavy strike.

  I took the slower attack time to my advantage, ducking under the swing and making a move for the cabin, slipping in and around the doorway before Little Helper could spin back to face me.

  HEALTH: 35/100

  Things sure are looking bleak for you, huh? Guess you’ll be kicking the bucket a whole lot sooner than I expected. I never should’ve taken the under…