Fantasy Online Polynya

by Harmon Cooper

  “One of the hostesses that was shot, yes.”

  “Damn.” Kodai slips around the table, steadies himself, and turns to Tesla who stands behind a Japanese man with long hair, the muzzle of her gun pressed into the back of his head. The man defiantly spits blood as Kodai approaches.

  “Give me,” Kodai tells Tesla.

  “Your fingerprints,” she reminds him.

  “Right. Good.” He clears his throat, steadies his gaze on the defiant man whose suit is slowly becoming saturated with blood. “I’ll make this unbelievably quick,” Kodai grits.

  Fuck if he doesn’t want to kill the man himself, especially since he was clearly the target, not to mention they attacked him at his favorite hostess bar and killed his gaijin fuckbuddy along with several others.

  And he’s already, in the time it took him to walk over to the man, calculated just how much this would cost. Damage control alone is going to be a bitch, and once other hostesses get word of this, it could definitely cause some distress and high turnover.

  “I’m not saying anything.” The man bares his red teeth at Kodai contumaciously.

  “I figured as much. Is he going to die soon?”

  Tesla’s eyes flash black as she scans him. “The authorities will be here before then.”

  “And if I try to disable you permanently, you’ll just become a cyborg and will remain a thorn in my side.” Kodai shakes his head. “No, no, that’s not going to do. Any ideas, Tesla?”

  She lowers her gun so it now points at his back. Tesla shoots her hand out, touches his temple with her other hand, and smiles. “Got it.”

  She fires the first shot into the man’s back and another into the back of his head.

  Before Kodai can say anything, Tesla explains her actions. “Since he was shot, his life chip was put in a distress mode, which can be accessed by any humandroid who may arrive on the scene without his verbal or digital approval. His name is Itachi Uchiha, and his known associate is Gintoki Sakata, the owner of the pink salon that you had me put out of business earlier today. I believe this was retaliation.”

  A moving image of Tesla entering N-Cats and taking out the humandroids comes to him. Gintoki Sakata acted fast. I should have been ready, Kodai thinks as he surveys the damage again.

  “Is there any way for the authorities to trace that you accessed his chip?”

  She shakes her head. “Everything I do is masked. All MercSecure agents are fashioned in this way.”

  “Good. Please kill anyone else that is alive and delete all surveillance that links you and me to the scene. I will meet you on the rooftop.”

  “Understood.”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “Two minutes, tops.” She points her gun at Kodai’s thug, Yagami, who’s pressed against an overturned table and breathing heavily. One headshot later and he’s done for good. With a quick swivel, she does the same for anyone in the room that is still alive.

  “Ready?”

  She nods, and they head to the kitchen.

  “Anyone in here?”

  Tesla does a quick scan of the room. “Clear. Let’s check the freezer.”

  Kodai opens the freezer door and the chef runs out wielding a knife. Bang! He’s dead before he can take two steps back into the kitchen.

  “There will be other witnesses,” Tesla says. “You will likely appear on their feeds, but I don’t believe there will be anything incriminating in them.”

  “Anyone who exits through the front or back and isn’t an authorized employee has their feed wiped.”

  Tesla turns her head to him as they exit. “Wiped completely?”

  “No live feeds allowed in the hostess bar. This is common in these types of establishments; it prevents someone from coming here and reliving or sharing what they experienced at a later date.”

  The door of his aeroSUV opens on its own and Kodai gets in the back. Tesla gets in the front and speaks to the vehicle for a moment, instructing its auto-drive functions.

  “Where to?” she asks.

  “Our plans have not changed,” Kodai says bitterly as the vehicle lifts into the air. “Ryuk’s place.”

  Chapter 27: Get Woke

  Ryuk is beside himself as his mind jumps from Tamana standing over him with her blade, to his doppelgänger looming over her shoulder.

  It was Kodai all along.

  “Your brother is the twat running around parading as you? Fick me, Marbles!” Hiccup throws his hands into the air. “What in the actual fick is going on here!?”

  Zaena harrumphs.

  “Sorry, Princess, like any normal mitherficker, I’m just a bit shocked by this sudden revelation.”

  “Craziness!” FeeTwix says. “So that means … ” His eyes flash blue. “Your brother has something to do with NPCs coming to our world.”

  Empress Thun stands from her throne.

  Her guards and her attendants turn to ash and a lock appears on the large door behind them. Even though there are no windows in her throne room, thick velvet curtains fall from the walls, further insulating the space.

  Her two baby griffins remain on their pedestals, sleeping as if nothing is happening.

  “We need to speak to Sophia,” Ryuk says, his throat suddenly parched. He takes a deep breath to steel himself, to remind himself of where he is and that there are people looking to him for guidance. “Sophia will know what to do. That’s why we’ve come here, Empress, we’ve come to Porthos to meet her. We didn’t know Zaena was royalty; we didn’t know that my brother, as you say, is the one that is parading around as me. We came here simply to speak to Sophia.”

  Empress Thun locks her dark eyes onto Ryuk. “If it is Sophia you need to speak to, I will call her here.”

  A blinding spark in the center of the room gets Hiccup bitching about UV rays.

  “Sheesh! Warn us next time!” the goblin growls. Before he can say anything else, an outline of a woman bathed in light takes shape at the center of the spark.

  Sophia Wang Level 99

  HP: 7399/7399

  Mana: 3976/3976

  ATK: 751

  MATK: 1983

  DEF: 1341

  MDF: 4485

  LUCK: 108

  Sophia has elven features and puffy black hair. Her flowing white dress is embellished with golden thread and her feet are encased in a pair of sandals adorned with fluttering Pegasus wings.

  Sophia performs the same full-body prostration the Mitherfickers suffered through earlier. Empress Thun places a foot on the top of her head, and once she’s done, the Mind Mage turns to them. “Hello, Ryuk.” She offers the others a tight grin. “You all may call me Doctor Wang.”

  “Finally,” Hiccup says as he rubs his hands together, “we get to meet the good doctor! Fick, we’ve heard a lot about you, lady, believe you me. Probably enough to make your elven ears twitch even if we were a continent away. Hey! Dammit, Liz, keep your fickin’ ghost paws to yourself!”

  Sophia gives the goblin a troubled, distasteful look. “I thought that removing the word ‘fuck’ from the goblin vocabulary would be a good thing,” she says to herself, yet loud enough for everyone else to hear. “Apparently, I was dead wrong.”

  “Hold the fick up. You’re the fickin’ Mind Mage who did this–” Hiccup keeps speaking, his jowls flapping up and down as no sound emerges from his mouth. His face grows red as he points a finger at Sophia and starts silently yelling.

  FeeTwix laughs. “You have got to teach one of us that spell!”

  “You’ll have to be a much higher level to learn Silence of the Fools,” Sophia says.

  Hiccup stomps his feet and crosses his arms over his chest.

  The Mind Mage shrugs. “I can permanently take away his ability to speak, if you’d like.”

  Ryuk looks from Sophia to FeeTwix. Next to the Swede, Hiccup is making an X with his arms as he looks to Ryuk with pleading eyes.

  Hiccup: Don’t do me dirty, kid. I’ve always been there for you, thick and thin. Hel
l, I’m practically your fickin’ wingman! I’m the one that got you off those training wheels and put you on that fat hog. Now look at your ass, all grown up. A couple of fickin’ hours from now and you’ll be knee deep in Enway’s churro!

  Zaena: You are a despicable creature.

  Hiccup: Love you too, Liz.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Ryuk tells Sophia, instantly regretting the words that come next. “Please restore his ability to speak once we’re finished here.”

  Hiccup: Thank you, Marbles! See, Liz, that’s called chivalry. Get woke!

  Sophia’s eyes flash white. “What is it you’ve called me here to discuss? If it is easier, I can simply read your thoughts.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Sophia,” the Empress says. “Ryuk can explain.”

  Ryuk steps forward and swallows down the nervous energy swelling in his stomach. This is it, the moment he’s been waiting for, and his thoughts race as he thinks of how he should begin. An image of his brother flashes before him and he casts it away.

  There will be time to deal with that later.

  (0)__(0)

  “Everything started with Tamana,” he explains, and beginning with that statement, he concisely recaps all that the Mitherfickers have been through. He touches on wanting to get in touch with Sophia, and mentions her guild rule that former members aren’t able to freely contact current members, which has made it difficult.

  “Rules are in place for a reason,” she says firmly, shooting him down. “So you were betrayed by Tamana, and before this, both of you had a digital hallucination in the real world after becoming resetters. Also, from what you can tell, these digital hallucinations are only happening to people from Tritania.”

  “Exactly.”

  A burp gets caught in Hiccup’s throat. He pounds his chest, and in the process, triggers a sharp toot that sounds like a bike tire popping.

  Sophia floats into the air and hovers there.

  “To be frank with you, I’ve already heard some about these digital hallucinations. I haven’t looked into it because I’ve been busy with other things. Now that the city has come under attack, and the fact that I believe an old foe may once again be making its presence known – although I can’t be sure – I haven’t spent as much time looking into the issue as I would have liked to. Chuntao,” she says aloud to some invisible entity, “compile all data related to Proxima-related hallucinations. What is your humandroid’s name?”

  “Hajime.”

  “Is that all you know? Do you know his handle? Most humandroids have a handle. For example, oh, I dunno, FDA Monitor 1351885. Something like that.”

  “He works for MercSecure. He was created by the creator of humandroids.”

  She scoffs. “I highly doubt that.”

  Hiccup: Damn this one is, snooty! You didn’t tell us your old guild leader was a fickin’ biotch, Marbles. Actually, I kind of like her. Reminds me of Spewy’s mother. Real sexy broad.

  “Really, that’s what he told me. Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Hold on. Chuntao, attempt to contact a humandroid named Hajime who works for MercSecure in Japan. Tokyo, right? Near Shibuya?”

  Mind Mage, Ryuk reminds himself. “Yes, that’s right,” he says. “I’d give you my family name, but … ”

  “But I can read it here and since this is a MercSecure humandroid, the name won’t necessarily match. I won’t pry deeper, but I do find it odd that you have one of these private security humandroids assigned to you. They’re dangerous.”

  “You have a MercSecure droid?” FeeTwix nods, clearly impressed. “Those things are badass!”

  “A humandroid?” Zaena tilts her head. “That’s right, your world’s version of NPCs, like me.”

  “You’re not just any NPC,” FeeTwix tells her, even as Hiccup rolls his eyes.

  “Good,” Sophia says as she reads a message that no one else can read. “Chuntao has established contact. If your humandroid can share their data with my AI, it will speed up the process.”

  “He will,” Ryuk agrees, “but there’s another, related thing that Hajime suggested and I think it’s even scarier than the hallucinations that are taking place.”

  “By all means, tell us,” Empress Thun implores.

  “I know you don’t believe me,” Ryuk says to Sophia, “but my humandroid really was created by Hewman, that’s his name, I think.”

  “Dr. Richard Hewman, the creator of the humandroid. Yes, it’s his name, and now that Chuntao has verified what you’ve said, I believe you.”

  Ryuk glances at FeeTwix, who nods for him to continue. “Hajime mentioned that there was an experiment in the 2050s in which an NPC took a humandroid’s body. Know anything about that?”

  Sophia lowers herself to the ground. “Ahem. Aiden?”

  “Yes, Sophia?”

  Hiccup nearly does a backflip when the masked man steps out of thin air next to the goblin. He’s the same guy who cuffed them in the courtyard earlier, the NPC member of the Knights of Non Compos Mentis.

  Hiccup: Holy fick! It’s the ninja guy!

  Ryuk looks at Aiden, who has a slice bang strapped across his back. “He’s been here the entire time?”

  “We spare no precautions,” Sophia says. “Not after what we’ve been through. Regarding what you just said about an NPC taking a humandroid body – look no further.”

  Aiden steps in front of the group and pulls his mask down to reveal a wolfish grin. “What? Were you expecting someone else? I’m not the only one who did it.”

  Sophia cuts him off. “Before we continue this discussion, I need to know a bit more of why it is your humandroid mentioned this to you.”

  “I think Hajime’s point was this: whatever is trying to come through to our world using people’s iNet feeds hasn’t discovered that it could be done via humandroids,” Ryuk says. “I wanted to bring this information to you, because I had a feeling you’d know more about who performed this experiment and what became of it.”

  Sophia bites her lip, nods, and looks at the four of them, double-checking with FeeTwix to make sure he isn’t broadcasting anything. “It was me,” she finally says. “Through what I called ‘R-diving,’ reverse-diving, I was able to bring an NPC, Aiden, to a humandroid’s body.”

  “So he could actually function up there?” FeeTwix asks.

  “Yes,” says Aiden, his eyes suddenly sad. “And it was marvelous.”

  “I was also able to do it with an RPC,” Sophia says. “But we shut it down not long after that. It was too dangerous.”

  “Then you see where this is going,” Ryuk says. “If whatever force is causing these digital hallucinations discovers that it is possible for NPCs to take humandroid bodies, then it could … ” He shakes his head. “It could be the end of the world as we know it!”

  “And you’re saying a Reborn Player Character can do it too?” FeeTwix asks. “What about just a regular Player Character? Could I take my avatar, and then using my avatar, R-dive, as you called it, and return to the real world?”

  The look on Sophia’s face sours. “One of the founders of the Knights, um, got stuck in a Proxima world known as Cyber Noir – the second time he was stuck, I should add. Anyway, long story short, we used this technique to temporarily bring Quantum back to our world. He was in a humandroid’s body for several days.”

  “Are you talking about Quantum Hughes?” FeeTwix asks. “Big fan over here! I’ve based my playing style off him and haven’t looked back!”

  Sophia curls her lip for a moment. “We can speak more about Quantum later.”

  “I hope so!”

  Ryuk asks, “I get NPCs and RPCs being about to theoretically come … ”

  “There is nothing theoretical about what I’ve just told you. Aiden actually came through to our world.”

  “That’s right, and it was pretty kickass.”

  “What I don’t get is why a Player Character would come,” Ryuk says.

  �
�Because he was stuck, like I told you. It was quite a complicated situation, and I don’t believe any of you, especially the goblin, would be able to comprehend the details. But imagine a fully submerged person in a Proxima dive vat coming into a world such as Tritania, and from there, diving back to our world into a humandroid’s body. Of course, reverse diving, or R-diving, is much more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of how it works.”

  “Craziness,” FeeTwix says.

  “So I could go to your world?” Zaena asks FeeTwix.

  Sophia shakes her head. “No, no, you couldn’t. No one can. I never told anyone how to do it and I plan to keep the secret to my grave because of situations like this.”

  She approaches the Empress and they speak quietly for a moment. Once they’re finished, she turns back to the Mitherfickers.

  “I need an hour or so to look into things in the world up there. I also don’t want any of you to go anywhere, just for safety purposes. I will see to it that you can’t log out until I’m back.”

  “Nothing will happen to us up there,” FeeTwix assures her.

  “What you four now possess is sensitive information. Once I’ve logged back in, your dashboard will be restored and you’ll be free to do what you’d like.”

  “Fine by me,” Ryuk says, “but I need your word that we now have a direct line to the Knights.”

  “You do. In fact, if it makes you feel any better, Aiden will keep you company.”

  Hiccup throws his hands up in the air and fires off a message to Ryuk about extreme vetting and how the “balaclava boy” isn’t joining the guild.

  (0)__(x)

  Empress Thun stands, and as quickly as she appeared, she’s gone.

  The room elongates, spins, and the Mitherfickers find themselves in a bedroom with six beds and a griffin tapestry on the wall.

  The room is nearly the same size as the throne room, meaning it’s just about the biggest bedroom Ryuk has ever seen. Aside from the beds, there are tables, plush sofas around a fire, and a stack of board games in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase.

  “He’s back!” Hiccup pumps his brass fist in the air. The goblin glares at Aiden. “So it was that Sophia of yours all along that cursed us goblins. What a fickin’ hater.”