“Aes!” Oh dammit, dammit, he was messed up bad! She barely heard him mumbling something before his eyes closed. Green flashed around him weakly, enough to partially heal the sickening compound fracture on his leg. But he was still bleeding. Fuck!
She slapped his face, hard. Then she did it again.
His eyes fluttered open. “...win?”
Her eyes were watering again. “Aes! Heal yourself again! You're going into shock all over again! Heal yourself before you pass out!”
Aes groaned. Another wave of green glow wrapped itself around him. The skin closed over his leg wound. Anxiously, Darla checked him for other leaks. His hero suit was trashed; torn and punctured by bullets, it still had dried blood on it from the last bad fight, and fresh blood still drying from the boss fight.
He stopped perspiring and began to breathe more deeply. His eyes opened again. “Still..here,” he muttered.
Darla turned her head and drew the back of her hand across her eyes. “That,” she announced, “was WAY too close. We almost lost you that time.”
Aes healed himself again and sat up. “I'm too old for this.”
A finger the size of a stubby kielbasa prodded Darla's shoulder. “Can I talk to you privately for a minute?” asked Sherman, jerking his head toward the door, his eyes on hers.
She sighed. Crap. Well, I guess this is 'later'. “Aes, just rest and keep healing yourself. I'll be right back.” She rose to her feet and followed Sherman out the door and down the hall.
“What the fuck is going on?” Sherman demanded. “What is the point of an avatar that gets compound fractures and gushing bullet wounds? I agreed to a healer...not some kind of 'bot! Are you trying to get us banned?”
Darla had heard of Players who tried to get an advantage in games by using hacks like automated avatars or 'bots'. She glanced back at the door to the boss room. “Keep your voice down. Aes is not a bot. He's as real as we are. Maybe realer.”
“Then what is he? Is he a GM trying out ideas for a new game? Or some kind of artistic tweaker with a death wish?”
She exhaled. “Promise not to call me crazy.”
“I never said you were crazy.”
“You will,” she predicted. “Sometimes I think I am crazy. Because I think he's a ghost in the machine, Sherman. He died in the real world while he was playing, and now he has no body to go back to. Dead out there, alive in here. If he dies in here, he's gone.”
“But that's --” He stopped himself in time. “I knew there was something strange about him. I'm not saying I believe you. But just for the sake of argument, let's say it's true. Then why did you bring him in here where a couple of lucky shots could really kill him?”
“Because there's another ghost, one that's really evil, and we need to kill him. I have to level Aes up so he can survive that fight and win.” She looked him in the eye. “I swear this is not roleplay, Sherman.” Oh, what the hell. In as few words as possible she told him about Am-heh.
Sherman regarded her. “I'm trying to believe you,” he said. “We'll figure out something. Right now, let's get Aes out of here before the boss re-spawns.”
Aes was on his feet by the time they got back to him. He apologized for worrying them. “Apparently I have a lot to learn about fighting bosses,” he said.
“You did just fine, Aes,” Sherman assured him. “Well, maybe you should have spent more time self-healing in between healing us. But you're good. I tried to make a healer once. It was too hard on me deciding who to heal and who to let die. The guilt drove me to switch to tanking.”
“I was afraid I had chosen wrong at the end of that fight,” said Aes. “Darla's health was lower, but for some reason I healed you instead.”
“No, you did it exactly right,” Sherman assured him. “At that moment she was too weak to finish him off. If you'd healed her instead of me, I wouldn't have been able to help her. It would have just taken him a shot or two more to finish her off, that's all.”
“You need to grow stronger,” Darla told Aes. “But we can't just take our time and do it safely, clearing the streets. Am-heh might be leveling and you have to level too. Without mission completion bonuses like the one that leveled Sherman, it would take too long.”
“There's another option,” Sherman offered. “We could have a go at power-leveling him.”
“And you thought I was the one trying to get us banned? power-leveling is against the Terms of Service, which I'm sure you know.”
“Only if you use hacks or cheats or charge money for it. There are ways to exploit the rules legally. You just have to know how.”
“Are you saying you know how? You've tried this personally?”
He laughed. “Nah, getting there is half the fun. But some people are in a hurry to level up toons for PvP matches. Friends of friends. Want me to see if I can set something up?”
Darla hesitated. She had always played by the rules, more or less, and especially more, in online games. She looked into Aes's blue eyes. If something happened to him she would never find out just what he really was. “Du musst Amboss oder Hammer sein,” she murmured.
“What was that?” Sherman queried.
“Something my Dad used to say. 'You must anvil or hammer be'.”
“I do not understand,” said Aes.
She brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes, then stood up and looked at Sherman. “It's time to find a blacksmith and forge this hero into something tougher. See what you can do.”
Chapter 37: Aes: bloody instructions
Gamers and Gods: AES Page 44
