“I guess,” I said. I opened the item information from the menu.
ITEM OBTAINED
Metaticket - Metagame Item
If used, this ticket will give you a one-time use code that allows a player to join the game with a new character. The code must be redeemed within three days of using the item.
CLICK HERE TO USE
“Weird,” Scarlett said. “I don’t know anybody who wants to play.”
“I guess I’ll invite Foster,” I said. “He’s been wanting to play and says he has a decent computer.”
“He seems like a good guy,” Scarlett said. “We talked a little while you were out of the room.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, he’s nice.”
I couldn’t help but feel a small stab of jealousy.
“Well, I probably made him uncomfortable earlier,” I said. “I doubt he’ll even want to hang out anymore, which leaves me with precisely zero friends.”
“Oh come on, what about us?” Scarlett said.
“Yeah, what about us?” Braddock added.
“Yeah,” Mariko said. I had almost forgotten she was even there.
“Sorry, I meant offline friends,” I said. “You guys are awesome.”
“I doubt Foster is mad at you Bran,” Scarlett said. “Do you have his phone number?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you call him now and see if he wants the ticket.”
“Well, it’s kind of late.”
“He just left. He’ll still be up. Give him a call.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call him. Be right back.”
I put the headset down on the desk and picked up the phone nearby. I dialed the number that Foster had written on the napkin and he picked up after a single ring.
“Hello?” Foster said, his voice quiet.
“Hey,” I replied. “It’s Bran.”
“Oh, hey man, what’s up?”
“Sorry, I know it’s late. I just wanted to tell you that I ended up getting another Metaticket from that mission I did today. So if you want to play, I could give it to you.”
“Are you serious?” he asked, his voice raising. Then he dropped down to a whisper. “Are you messing with me?”
“No, seriously,” I said. “Do you want it?”
“Uh, yeah I want it. That’s awesome!”
“Come by tomorrow and I’ll give you the disks and the code.”
“Cool, I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
We said bye and hung up, then I put my headset back on.
“He’s going to start playing tomorrow.”
“Awesome,” Scarlett said.
“That will give us five people,” Braddock said. “We’ll be qualified for any mission the Eagles throw at us.”
“See Bran,” Scarlett said. “You have friends.”
I smiled, my anger at the conversation with Paul finally fading.
“I guess I do,” I said.
Level 9
Caustic
1
The next day, Foster made a character and joined Atomic Massacre. He chose to be a huge mutant who he named Caustic. Green-skinned, with glowing neon veins and bulging muscles, Caustic was over a foot taller than Boothe, and nearly twice as wide. He started off at Level 1 with only a wooden plank as a weapon, but when the group met up in Perry and began helping him fight off mutmites, gecks, bandits, and other monsters around the wasteland, Caustic leveled quickly and soon unlocked new abilities.
He could cause bursts of radiation to emit from his body, damaging any living creature around him. He could infuse radiation into any ammunition or melee weapon, temporarily allowing them to do extra poison damage. Then, when they found a Grenade Launcher on another dead player, Caustic began to focus on explosive damage. One of his favorite strategies was to infuse his radiation into a grenade before launching it into the middle of a group of enemies, creating a poison cloud that would kill nearly anything. Even if they survived the initial blast, few would outlast the poison. Against living creatures, Caustic’s abilities were extremely valuable, but they found that against robots, he was nearly useless. He could still launch grenades, but the poison did nothing against mechanical creatures.
When they weren’t power-leveling Caustic, the rest of the group did their own things as well. Boothe took Marty to Caden’s Outpost outside of Perry and paid to have his drone repaired and upgraded. After the fight with The Injector, Marty was in bad shape, but Caden fixed him right up. Boothe also spent a little over $300 to add armor plating for extra protection and a speed booster so that he could hopefully stay out of danger in the future. The drone actually seemed somehow happy to be back.
Scarlett spent the time working on repairing Boothe’s and Mariko’s armor. She hunted more mutstags, skinned them, and tanned the leather. Then she used that to bring the durability back up to maximum on each of their armor pieces and even added some extra padding in Boothe’s chest and back, and at the front of his thighs and shins. All of this added an additional point of armor to each piece without slowing him down at all.
Boothe learned that robots and mutants had different skills than human characters. Braddock explained that while humans had Survival, robots had little need for that skill and so had another called Mechanics. This allowed them to upgrade, repair, and modify any machine, including The Falcon and their new van.
Braddock had taken to calling the Falcon the “Mach Point-One-Five”.
“You know in Speed Racer, he had the Mach Five, right?” Braddock asked.
“Yeah,” Boothe replied.
“Well, Mach 5 is ridiculous. That’s like nearly 4000 miles per hour. This Falcon tops out at around 115 to 120 miles per hour. That’s about Mach .15.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Boothe said. He’d probably still call it the Falcon.
Much like Speed Racer’s car, Braddock added weapons and armor to the Falcon, along with a speed booster that could be activated by the press of a button on the steering wheel. Machine guns were mounted on the sides of the car that, when activated, would automatically target any enemy in front of the vehicle and fire at them with high-powered rounds. He also plated the sides and front with armor, adding to the car’s defense. Bullets would no longer be able to pierce through the grill and do damage to the engine. They all had to chip in a little money for the parts, but when Braddock was done, the Falcon was like a completely new vehicle.
Mariko did most of the power leveling with Caustic. She didn’t care about crafting skills and instead focused on killing anything she could. By the time Caustic was close to the same level as everybody else in the group, Mariko had advanced to become the highest leveled character in the group - maybe even in the entire game.
Boothe checked in occasionally on the children that they had rescued. Most of them were quickly recovering, though their mutations seemed to be permanent. They would never be quite human again, but they would live. Many were returned to families around the wasteland, but others were now orphaned and would be cared for by the Eagles.
Boothe had held off on spending his skill point, until he could see what the rest of the group was going to do. Braddock focused on Machinery, with a little bit in Weaponsmith, Scarlett had a point in Armorsmith and Survival, but mostly focused on Stealth, while Caustic was focusing on Survival and another skill called Psionics that Boothe wasn’t sure about at all. Nobody knew what Mariko was putting her skills into, though Boothe suspected that she was dumping every point into Stealth. That left Boothe with Hacking and Driving to cover all the bases. He decided to put the points this level into Intelligence and Hacking, thinking that maybe if he would have been able to hack The Injector, they could have avoided the fight entirely.
After a few days, Caustic was ready to go on missions with them. He was decked out with a helmet and breastplate made from hammered steel, along with more metal plates down his huge legs. All of it was extremely heavy - nothing Boothe could ever wear, but Caustic was huge and unna
turally strong. He wore his grenade launcher on his back, and a bandolier of various types of grenades stretched around his wide waist.
Throughout all this time, The Eagles had not contacted them for another mission. Boothe was pretty sure they were holding missions back, in order to let the other cells catch up to them. Boothe never really cared about the points before, but when he began to see their lead diminish, he wondered what the rankings were for. Were they just for bragging rights, or did the teams on top get some sort of reward?
The top four teams were now much closer than they had been in the past.
Atomic Massacre - 601
Laserdix - 570
Miami Digital - 544
Orange Horizon - 537
Boothe had no idea what the points meant, but he knew two of the other teams in the top four. Laserdix was the team that Lucas led. He didn’t understand how anybody could be on the same team as that douchebag, but apparently they were doing pretty well. He didn’t know who Miami Digital were, but Orange Horizon was Paul’s new team. They had been soaring up the rankings quickly, as though they were playing every waking hour.
Finally, three days after their last mission in Oklahoma City, Victor sent them a message.
Atomic Massacre, please report to the Eagle’s Nest for your next mission.
When they arrived, other players were already standing outside the conference room in the hallway of the Eagle’s Nest. Boothe recognized them as the top teams. Lucas and his guys, along with Cthulwho and his new team were already there. The other team, filled with people he had never seen before, must have been Miami Digital. Boothe kept his head down, trying to ignore everybody, focusing instead on organizing his inventory. Anything to avoid the awkward situation of seeing an old friend who was a friend no longer.
After a couple of uncomfortable minutes, Victor walked down the hall and said “Atomic Massacre goes first. Come with me.”
He led them into the conference room and invited them to have a seat before shutting the door. With the press of a button, he closed the blinds on the conference room windows, blocking out the sight of the other groups waiting in the hallway.
Victor took his customary place behind the podium and pressed a few buttons. The map of the region appeared on the screen behind him. Boothe had gotten used to this process by now, and without even having to think about it, saved every map into his goggles.
“This is Dallas,” Victor said. “Or what’s left of it.”
Boothe’s eyes went wide. It was strange seeing the place where he lived in real life reduced to a crater in the game. Even worse than Wichita, Dallas had been completely destroyed. Victor showed them pictures of the place, where only a few buildings still stood. Boothe recognized the Chase building, with its weird slot on the top, had large chunks ripped out of the side where concrete and steel bars were visible Every window was broken, making it look like some weird skeleton of its former self. The Comerica building had broken across the middle and toppled over onto its side. Amazingly, the Reunion Tower still stood, but the iconic ball at the top of the building had been broken, the upper part ripped away, turning the sphere into a sort of lopsided bowl.
It took Boothe a moment of staring at the photos to notice the dome. The translucent blue forcefield rose above the highest skyscraper and encircled the entirety of the area around the Reunion Tower like some strange snow globe.
“Dallas is where Orion has based his entire operation. We got these pictures through flyby missions over the last few days. As you see, the place is protected by a force field that allows no entry. We are bringing you all in now, because we are preparing to launch an assault on the base. This will be a multi-part mission that will take some time to complete. We want our best teams on this, but first I must ask if you will accept.”
NEW MISSION: Orion
The Eagles have asked you to take part in the most important mission in the wasteland - taking down Orion, the bandit king. This will be a long, difficult mission, and once begun cannot be abandoned.
Reward: Unknown
DO YOU ACCEPT?
Boothe looked for a moment at the other members of the team.
“Reward unknown?” Braddock said. “That’s kind of weird.”
“This has got to be how you beat the game,” Scarlett said. “Orion is the big bad. Of course we have to accept.”
“Yes,” Mariko said.
“I’ll do whatever you guys want to do,” Caustic said.
Boothe nodded. “I’m accepting.”
The rest did as well. Then Victor said “Good. I’m glad you’re with us.” He pressed a button and the photographs on the screen changed back to a map of the area around Dallas. “Now, the first part of our mission is to set up forward bases closer to Dallas. Attacking from Wichita is too slow, and we’d like to keep the major conflicts closer to his base, to minimize civilian casualties.”
Four blips appeared on the map with labels beneath them - Arlington, Grapevine, Richardson, and Mesquite. Boothe recognized the names. They were cities around the Dallas area.
“We’ve located four buildings that seem to fit our needs,” Victor said. “We are sending our top four cells to these buildings to eliminate any opposition and clear the area for us to move our people in. These will become new nests - our forward bases for the next step in the assault. Since your cell is at the top of the rankings, you will get first choice as to which building you take.”
He walked around the podium with a dossier and handed it to Boothe. “There is information about each of the buildings in here. I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss your plan and make your choice.”
Boothe opened the dossier and found four pages with information on the different buildings. There were pictures of some of the enemies located inside, the advantages and disadvantages of each location, and other information about each possible base.
Boothe and the rest of the group looked through each of the pages to make their decision.
LOCATION 1: Arlington Convention Center - Arlington, TX
Distance from Orion’s base: 4.4 miles
Features
One-floor - Low outer defense, high inner defense, high stability
Large Rooms - High vehicle and heavy weapons storage, low Housing
Enemies
Mutants - They have tents set up in the large rooms. It will be difficult to separate them, which will likely mean fighting many at the same time.
LOCATION 2: Gaylord Texan Resort Hotel - Grapevine, TX
Distance from Orion’s base: 5.5 miles
Features
Castle-like Structure - High outer defense, low inner defense.
Hotel - Low Vehicle and Heavy Weapons storage, high housing.
Enemies
Bandits - The floorplan is large and the bandits are spread throughout the place. Searching the entire building will take some time, and it may be impossible to get every enemy out.
LOCATION 3: Palisades Central Tower - Richardson, TX
Distance from Orion’s base: 4.25 miles
Features
Highrise - High inner and outer defense, low stability.
Office Building - Low Vehicle and Heavy Weapons storage, high housing.
Enemies
Robots - Spread throughout the facility, robots guard the place relentlessly, attacking any living thing that enters. If we could take the place without destroying them, we could use the defenses to our advantage.
LOCATION 4: City of Mesquite Municipal Complex - Mesquite, TX
Distance from Orion’s base: 3.25 miles
Features
Spacious with many Windows - Low Defense.
Varied Rooms - High storage and high housing.
Enemies
A group consisting of both bandits and mutants have claimed this place. They may have robotic guards as well. Expect a varied group of enemies.
CHOOSE YOUR TARGET
2
After a bit of discussion, the group decided to go with the
Palisades Tower in Richardson as it seemed the be the most defensible of the four buildings. The place being filled with robots would also give Boothe a chance to try out his newly-improved hacking skills. Caustic wouldn’t be very effective here, but surely they could find something for him to blow up. They were a little worried as to what Low Stability meant, but hoped that it wouldn’t become an issue.
NEW MISSION: Take the Palisades Central Tower
Clear all the enemies out of the tower and use the provided radio to contact The Eagles to form a new base. Be careful not to cause unnecessary damage, as we will still need to use the building afterwards.
Rewards: New Eagles Base, $2000
“Very good,” Victor said, handing Boothe the dossier labeled “Richardson”. Boothe flipped through it and saw maps of the tower and the surrounding area. He pressed the button on his goggles to save it all to memory.
Victor also handed them a blocky plastic radio.
“This will allow you to contact us,” Victor said. “You should be able to get a signal with no problem from the top of that tower. Let us know when the place is clear and we will fly in to set up the base. Be sure you take out the anti-air turrets on the roof before you call us.”
“Got it,” Boothe said.
Victor shook their hands one at a time and said “Good luck Atomic Massacre. We’re all counting on you.”
They left the conference room, the other players outside watching them with sideways glances. Cthulwho looked like he wanted to say something as they walked past, but Boothe continued towards the elevator without acknowledging him. When they got to the parking lot, Mariko and Braddock took their motorcycles, Caustic drove the Vandura, and Scarlett rode with Boothe in the Falcon. They could have all ridden together, but none of them were sure how long it would be before they returned to New Wichita and they didn’t want to leave the vehicles behind.
As they drove down the highway, this was the first time in a few days that Scarlett and Boothe had been alone together. It made him think of that time that he and Scarlett had first left Perry in the race against Lucas. Really, only a little over a week had passed since then, but it felt like so much longer.
Apocalypse 2020: A Wasteland LitRPG Page 23
