Fragged

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “Works for me.” I said before Pete could say anything snide-filled, “Miles’ll go through the door first, Chad and I’ll cover him, then the rest of us will follow.”

  “And why do I have to go first?”

  “Because you’re the dick who decided it’d be fun to fuck with the rest of us,” I replied coldly, “you got a problem with that?”

  Miles appeared to mull the question over for a few seconds, before finally shrugging and shaking his head, “Nah, seems pretty fair to me. Let’s rock-n-roll.”

  Chapter Two

  Luckily for Miles, there was no one waiting for us in the underground section of the Metois’ main building, but as I dropped into the lab-like room, I couldn’t help but feel the urge to at least put a bullet through his kneecap for being a tool.

  “Property marker should be down here somewhere,” Miles said before pointing to one of the three heavy-looking steel doors, “it’ll be in one of these rooms I reckon.”

  “And how are we supposed to get in there?” Pete asked as he followed after me, “You know, on account o’ the fact I forgot my TNT in my other pants.”

  “We’ll get the NPCs on it,” Chad said with a smile, “gets them some XP in building and crap, and it means we’ll get through in a couple of minutes instead of a couple of hours.”

  “And what are we supposed to do then?” I asked, “We kinda need the builders to be doing other stuff which we can’t do, like fixing the wall.”

  “Except for the fact that we don’t.” Chad replied somewhat boldly, “You want the truth of it? Those little brainless workers out there are actually getting pretty smart, especially with the girls building them up, and once we hit fifty they can start governing themselves.”

  “Isn’t that really dangerous?” Paul asked, “Like, last time we did that was with that first clan of ours, and they ended up rising against us and forcing us out of our fort.”

  “It won’t be dangerous if you get the right leader in front of them,” Pete added, “you get one of those guys who’s been with us since the beginning, put them in charge, and let their relationship with you guys stop him from deciding to rip us to shreds.”

  I didn’t really like the fact that I was kind of being edged out of the conversation regarding where our clan was going, but at the same time I didn’t wholly mind that the guys who’d done their research were talking.

  “Alright,” I said forcefully, putting myself back in the centre of attention, “then you’re suggesting we go out and get more NPCs, right?”

  Chad shook his head, “That’s more brainless crap, send the Js to do it.”

  “Then what?” I snapped a tad more aggressively than I’d intended to, “You’ve thrown out a bunch of goals, but no real suggestions. What are we meant to do?”

  “We work on stuff that we don’t trust the NPCs to do,” Chad said with a smile, “we put out those fires, we work on locking down this building, then the next, then the one after that, and so on. We pick the buildings we want to use, for the moment, and what we want to use them for, while at the same time getting an idea of what we want to actually do with this place.”

  “Do with this place?” I laughed, “Like Miles suggested, we’re probably gonna just tear the buildings down after we capture this place and unlock all the beds.”

  “That’s long-term though, isn’t it? I mean, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  He had a point, but again, I felt like I was being cut out of a pretty important part of the discussion we were supposed to be having as a group.

  I was saying a lot, sure, but it was all just sort of getting swept away while the group all looked to Chad and nodded along in agreeance.

  “Okay, fine,” I let out with a dejected sigh, “we’ll do it your way, but I’m telling you this isn’t going to be as easy as you think it is.”

  Chapter Three

  “Crap…” I muttered as I looked over the fire-free base, “that was easier than I thought…”

  Getting up and out of the basement was the trickiest part of the whole thing, but once Miles had finished tinkering with the elevator, we were in business.

  “Hell yeah it was,” Chad said with a big smile from where he stood beside me, the others still busy clearing out one of the buildings near the front gate, “and it only took us, what, ten minutes?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed in response, “still though, I maintain that we should’ve at least considered some other option.”

  “What other option? The builders are almost done breaking down the doors, the Js’ll be back any time now with a bunch more NPCs, and we’re almost at the point where we’ll be able to work on making this a solid base of our own.”

  “It fell with the Metois at the helm.” I said coolly, hoping that that simple remark would be enough to get rid of Chad’s giddy grin.

  “That’s because they got too big to sustain themselves,” Chad replied without losing his grin, “they were organised, sure, but I’m willing to bet that there were a lot more people like Miles than they were willing to admit.”

  “And we did basically invite those guys to crash a truck through the gates.” I chuckled, finally growing my own little smile as Chad’s happiness reached contagious levels.

  “Exactly! Ha, they had no idea what hit them.” Chad laughed as Pete came out of the building and came jogging over toward us, “You watch, we’ll have that subterranean base of yours up and running in no time.”

  “Then what though?” I asked, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m excited, but once that is all said and done, what will we do? Turn into the Metois? Swallow ourselves up and basically go from playing a fun survival game to what will essentially be a God-sim?”

  “No, we’re too much fun to let anything like that happen.” Chad replied with a somewhat serious tone behind his words, “I reckon we won’t settle here until it’s a hundred percent finished, and then from there it’ll only be a matter of time before we end up rolling up to the city, maybe take a swing at that tower.”

  Something about him bringing up the tower triggered something in me, like some kind of mental tic, like he’d said it before and the experience tied to it was painful, but that all quickly gave way as Pete finally reached us.

  “Hey,” the sniper said after making sure we weren’t still talking, “the other guys’re almost finished up with searching, so I’m gonna go ahead and set up a position on the roof, make sure no one comes our way without us knowing about it.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I replied, “give us a shout if you need anything.”

  “Will do, boss.” Pete said, emphasising the word ‘boss’ as if to bolster my feeling of leadership, before running into the building with a grin on his face.

  “Man, that guy really likes playing sniper, huh?” Chad practically scoffed, “I don’t think I could ever enjoy sitting around waiting for stuff to happen that much.”

  “I… Isn’t that, like, exactly what we’re doing right now?” I laughed, “Don’t get me wrong, I get what you’re saying, but we’re literally just standing here, waiting for the guys and the builders to finish up.”

  “Yeah, but… heh, shit, you’re right.” Chad replied with a sort of stunned surprise, “Speaking of, the builders are done, you wanna go see what’s down there?”

  “I don’t see why not.” I said then paused, “Wait, what if the elevator breaks again?”

  Chad didn’t respond for a few seconds, then shrugged, “Then we’ll be stuck in the basement I suppose. Come on, let’s capture ourselves a base.”

  Chapter Four

  The builders had smashed through the doors with ease, and, in doing so, had gotten themselves more than enough resources to do… Honestly? I didn’t really know what I wanted them to do with the chunks of metal, I just knew I was glad they had them.

  “Would you look at that,” Chad said, pointing at the empty doorway directly opposite the elevator, “I could’ve told you it was gonna be in there.”

  “Ah, but you
didn’t.” I replied as we walked toward the room where a simple blue flag sat in waiting, “So, what? We just rip it out?”

  “I mean… I think so? I’m not sure.”

  I went to scold him for not remembering what we were supposed to do, but then we crossed the threshold of the property marker’s room and, with a quiet hum and a flash, the floor started to glow blue from a brilliant ring of light that had formed around the flag.

  So, you’re going to try to take someone else’s Home Base. Isn’t that just typical of you? Ugh, I can’t believe I have to talk to someone as puerile as you.

  Capturing xXMetois ClanXx’s Home Base.

  Ten minutes remaining.

  “Okay…” I trailed off after a tense few seconds of silence, “so, I’m gonna go ahead and take a stab in the dark and say that the remaining Metois got a notification about that, yeah?”

  “I think that that would be a fair assumption, yes.” Chad replied, his voice indicating that he was just as concerned as I was about what was going to happen over the coming ten minutes.

  “And it’s also fair to assume that, upon seeing that notification, they’re going to come here en masse, yes?”

  “Again, I agree.”

  “Okay… okay…” I muttered as I struggled to think, the overwhelming pressure of what we’d just done bearing down on me as my brain was forced to shift from cool and calm conversation to crisis-mode, “So, this is just an idea, what if we leave?”

  “And do what?” Chad seethed, “The Metois’ll know we’re here anyway, which means they’ll either come or they won’t.”

  “Goddamn, I’m sick of you being right all the time.” I snapped externally instead of internally like I’d intended, “Alright, what if we bring the builders in here, do you think that’ll speed up the timer?”

  Chad thought about it a while, that or he was just struggling to speak, “It might? I don’t know, do you want to try?”

  I hesitated, the opportunity to make a decision that wasn’t going to be questioned surprising me into a sort of stunned silence, but eventually managed to nod, “At the very least it’ll put some shielding between us and the elevator.”

  “That’s dark, but fair.” Chad half-heartedly chuckled, “Alright, you head over to the far wall, I’ll order them to come in here. Want me to send out a message to the others?”

  “I’m sure they already know,” I replied as I went as close to the other side of the room as I could without leaving the ring, “it’s better that they stay up there and we stay down here.”

  “Fair enough.” Chad said right before the builders started piling into the room, each one bringing the timer down by a considerable margin until, with most of them cramped into the tiny space, the little countdown read ‘Forty seconds remaining’.

  Really? Are you going to commit to this? Stealing someone else’s hard-earned home? What in the actual Hell is wrong with you?

  Judgemental game messages aside, the entire process was actually rather painless, and by the time the countdown hit zero it was more or less clear that the Metois weren’t coming, not any time soon anyway.

  xXMetois ClanXx’s Home Base captured.

  Move Zoey’s Fighters’s Home Base?

  I lingered on that decision a while, considering whether or not it’d be worth it to simply have one of the other guys claim the base as their own instead of having all the responsibility on me, but eventually came to the conclusion that I’d probably end up hating myself if I let the opportunity to capture a massive base slip through my fingers.

  Zoey’s Fighters’s Home Base moved.

  Well, would you look at that? You moved! Good on you. I suppose you’re going to go ahead and gentrify the entire area now, huh? Or maybe you’ll do the ‘decent’ thing and let the place continue to degrade. Either way, know that you’ve had two homes now while others have had none. Let that sink in, you selfish bastard.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but…” I started then trailed off as I looked around the room that officially belonged to me, “do we own this place now?”

  “We do,” Chad replied with an undeniable level of shock, “we really do.”

  Chapter Five

  Community Population: 47/290

  “I take it things went well?” Miles asked as Chad and I came out of the main building.

  “Very well.” I replied with a massive grin before looking over the group of Freemen, “I see the Js made it back with a few new hands.”

  “That they did,” Paul said from where he stood at the edge of the crowd in the centre of the compound, “but judging from the blood on these guys, I’m guessing that there was a bit of struggle.”

  “How many did we lose?” Chad asked as we walked over to the blank-faced mass of people.

  “I reckon at least a dozen, maybe more.” Paul replied with a somewhat disappointed tone, “The Js aren’t exactly careful with their method of capture.”

  “They don’t have to be,” I interjected after seeing the strong figures up close, “as long as they get the job done. Chad, you wanna send Cassandra and a few of these guys out to get some more berries? Maybe send one of the Js along with them as a protection detail. Oh, and get those builders up here, I want them running tear-down on all the structures that don’t have beds in them.”

  “You got it.” Chad said.

  Everything was more or less falling into place, and that felt pretty damn good.

  “What should we do?” Paul asked after I started back toward the main building.

  “I want you to start doing up some preliminary designs for the underground base.” I replied almost automatically, “I reckon our Engineer’s gonna be able to start taking custom work soon, and I’d love it if we had something to work with right off the bat.”

  “And what about me?” Miles practically shouted as I kept walking away.

  “You’re on… you know what? You do what you think you need to do.”

  “What? Am I not worthy of delegation?” Miles joked.

  “It’s not that,” I said as I stopped and turned to face him, “it’s just that… Right now I’ve kinda done all the delegation that my brain can handle, and I genuinely can’t think of a task that you can do.”

  Miles smiled at that, but then quickly turned concerned as he undoubtedly started to question his value in our little team, “I’ll… I’ll run a perimeter sweep, make sure that no one’s gonna get the drop on us.”

  “Works for me.” I replied somewhat dismissively before turning and continuing my walk into the main building where, with a quiet little chuckle, I came to a realisation, “Heh, what the fuck am I meant to do?”

  Chapter Six

  As I aimlessly wandered the halls of my new main building, I couldn’t help but feel like I couldn’t ever be a CEO or anything like that.

  I’d delegated all the tasks that needed to be done, and short of an all-out war happening in the courtyard, I wasn’t really needed for much else.

  In a way I felt both pivotal and utterly useless, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.

  “How’s it going?” Chad asked as he came up behind me, “You look kinda lost.”

  It took me a moment to realise he was talking to me, but quickly put on a happy face when I did, “Nah, just doin’ some thinking. You think things are going good?”

  “Honestly? I think things are going awesomely. You’ve really accomplished something here.”

  “Have I though?” I asked with a smidge more defeatism than I’d intended, “I mean, all I did was tell you guys what to do. I didn’t actually achieve anything.”

  “Bull. Shit.” Chad replied with a half-smile, “You’ve saved each of our lives at least once, you’ve pointed us in the right direction consistently, and you’ve always been there in the heat of battle. Honestly, I can’t think of a way that we’d have made it here without you pulling us together and pushing us where we needed to go.”

  I enjoyed the compliment, but that’s all it really felt like,
a compliment, empty words being used to make me feel better so that I was a bit easier to be around.

  “Well, as long as you’re sure.” I finally said, balancing myself between annoyingly egotistical and utterly pessimistic, “How’re the builders going? We making progress?”

  Chad shrugged, “Eh, I wish we were moving a bit faster, but all-in-all I think we’re going at a reasonable rate. Shouldn’t be long ‘til this place is almost entirely automated though, we’ve already got a couple of pregnant ones down there.”

  “That’s good I s’pose,” I replied, doing my best to ignore the fact that I’d been pretty desperate to have a mostly female force in the beginning, “you reckon we’ll need any more dinos?”

  “For the hunters and warriors maybe, but I don’t think we’ll need any for transport. Most of the raw materials we need for building the bunker are all here, and I’m sure we’ll be able to figure out the wood and that later. There’s a whole lot of forest out there.”

  I have to admit, it still kind of felt like I was taking a shortcut by

  hijacking the Metois compound, but at the same time it wasn’t like they were using it anymore.

  “What about those guys with the semi?” I asked as the tune from RvB popped into my head for whatever reason, “You think they’ll be a problem?”

  “Nah, I think they had beef with the Metois because… well, who didn’t?” Chad laughed, “You need to stop worrying yourself, everything is going as well as it possibly could.”

  “Is it though? I mean, doesn’t this all seem a little too easy to you?”

  “No, and it only feels that way for you because we spent such a long time getting here and now that we’re finally done there’s nothing for you to do.” Chad replied with an odd sort of prescience that actually made me kind of uncomfortable, “The ending to one part of the story will almost always feel easy, but the fact of the matter is we still need you, for the next part.”