by Ben Ormstad
-14 HP
I came to by someone grabbing my arm and dragging me up.
“Are you all right, Mr. Walsh?”
“Yeah, man,” I said hoarsely and picked up the Rap-Attack from the ground.
“Our bullets do not seem to damage it,” he continued.
“I know,” I replied, pointed at the beast’s feet. “But the lava does.”
We ducked when the ground shook again, loosening pieces of rock from the community’s entrance gate. Frida pushed detritus out of the way and came up to us, waving a Ball-Buster grenade at me. “And so do these.”
Having used mine on the first assholes that showed up, I said: “Great, but I’m all out.” I looked at Hiko. “How ’bout you?”
“One left.”
“Graaaghh!” The Pulverizer’s roar echoed around us, mixing in with the continuous thunder of bullets being fired by the mishaps’ weapons. One of the larger ones was out of ammo and circled the beast while stabbing its legs and ankles with a long, jagged spear. She efficiently dodged a powerful kick, pivoted and jabbed the spear tip into the soft flesh behind the beasts kneecap. Again it roared, then unexpectedly fast snatched her in its huge hand. She screamed as it squished her as easy as crumpling a piece of paper, before throwing her dead body into the expanding pool of lava behind.
“Dex, pay attention,” Frida said and elbowed me.
Forcing my eyes off the daemonorg’s carnage, I nodded. “Yeah… So we have three grenades total – correct?”
They both acknowledged.
I scouted for Ayamii and found him kneeling by a fellow mishap a few meters to the left. “Ayamii,” I shouted. “Get over here, now!”
At first he looked up at me, then back down to his friend. But I bellowed again and waved insistently. Reluctantly, he let go of the person and came running.
“I m-must help–” he began.
“Yes, and this is the best way to do so,” I interrupted and continued: “Either we take out that big-ass motherfucker, or we’re all dead, anyway.”
His changing expressions flashed defeat, understanding, and I saw in his worried eyes he agreed with me. “What do you w-want me to do?”
I spread my arms, placed them behind Ayamii and Frida’s back, moved closer to Hiko and said: “Do you still have more MP left, buddy?”
“Ye-yes.”
“Awesome. Okay, so this is what I’m thinking. Since our regular weapons don’t work, we’re pretty much stuck with the three grenades, your ability to fog minds, and the lava. It is actually our best friend now.”
More screams from mishaps being destroyed echoed around us. Rubble and debris smashed against the ground every time the giant asshole made a move.
“Therefore,” I said and told them my plan.
They agreed without argument. In a moment of feeling united, we all fist-bumped each other and spread out to finish off this shit-stained demon.
“Dex, take this,” Frida said and threw one of her two grenades to me. My body twitched, for a second believing it would go off. I caught it in the air, nodded a ‘thanks’ and ran toward the Pulverizer with Ayamii at my side, while Frida and Hiko positioned themselves on each side of us. Jumping over lava-bubbling, widening cracks in the ground, I helped Ayamii safely over. “How close do you need to be?”
“A… a little closer,” he said, looking apologetically at me. “I’m s-sorry.”
“It is what it is.” As we passed two mishaps pumping out a steady stream of bullets from uzi-like weapons, stripping the beast of layers of skin and flesh, I briefly stopped. “We might be able to stop him. Keep firing, but try to find a safer spot by the entrance.”
Their deformed faces expressed uncertainty.
I leaned closer. “Just in case we piss it off too much, you know.”
“Go,” Ayamii shouted, waved his hands and pushed them away. “Do you want to d-die? Find cover by the entrance! Go!”
His desperation stirred them awake from their battle-induced stupor. They made a hand-sign and headed for the entrance.
“Not every mishap is as s-smart as me,” he said, an almost undetectable smile flickered among his changing expressions.
Feeling a hit of brotherly love for the strange, purple humanoid, I grinned. “Damn right, buddy.”
“Come. We’re soon c-close enough.”
As agreed upon, Frida and Hiko did their best to attract the demon’s attention by firing continuous rounds and screaming like crazy people, while also asking any mishap they met along the way to reposition themselves by the entrance. It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, however, since it seemed the Pulverizer was somehow drawn to Ayamii and me. Perhaps Ayamii’s mental ability triggered something in its mind even if Ayamii hadn’t used it yet.
“Braaarrrgh!” The inhumanly deep voice drew my eyes to the enemy, and I realized the rocket launcher was once again aimed straight at me.
“Sorry ’bout this,” I said as I picked Ayamii from the ground, bolted past a lava-filled crevice in the ground and hopped like a terrified rabbit behind the remains of a stone column.
BOOOM!
Rupturing a large area, the explosion’s immense power ripped open the surface and spat loads of lava into the air. Wherever it landed stuff scorched, leaving charred, dead spots where smoke curled up and gathered in a dense fog-like cloud beneath the cavern ceiling.
About five meters to my left, Hiko screamed in pain. Rolling around on the rugged ground, he tried to remove a squirt of lava before it burned through his FL-Armor. Black smoke coiled from the frying material.
“Hiko!” I yelled and ran toward him, only to find myself constrained by Ayamii. I forcefully withdrew my arm out of his grip. “The fuck are ya doing? Hiko’s burning!”
Gripping both my arms and spearing me with his green, bulging eyes, Ayamii said: “I know, Dex, but like you said – either we stop the big-ass muh-motherfucker or we’re all dead anyway. We must continue. Now!”
I knew he was right. Turning my back on Hiko, who had saved me at least twice already, who’d saved all of us, and who was a special and cool dude, I yelled: “Fuck this shit!”
The Pulverizer moved again – this time to escape the ground behind, which crumbled entirely and became a sea of boiling flames.
Ayamii stopped by a torn piece of rock which had fallen from the ceiling. “Close enough!”
“Okay, we’ll keep the bastard occupied. Do your thing,” I said, signaled to Frida that the second part of the plan had been initiated. Glanced back at Hiko just in time to witness his struggle end. His avatar became limp before a bright, golden light appeared and devoured him – leaving nothing.
Aggression flooded my chest, up into my head and out to the tips of my fingers. Flexing my muscles in anger, I rotated back to the big, ugly ass-wipe. “This is all your fault, demon spawn!”
While I continued screaming obscenities and firing streams of Rap-Attack rounds at the demon, Ayamii bowed with both hands held in front of his head, fingertips touching. Eyes closed. Upper body wiggling back and forth as if conjuring energy from the ground and into his body.
“Graaaahhhw!” Showing off its brain dead language, the beast decided Frida was a bigger threat than Ayamii. The ground trembled as its muscular body swung around to face her and took aim with the rocket launcher.
“Come and get it,” she yelled and fired shotgun slugs right at its weapon.
It bought me enough time to create some distance between myself and Ayamii. I zigzagged between burning hot lava leaking up from multitudes of cracks in the broken floor surface. The further away from the community entrance I got, the more the ground reminded me of a patchy, ripped-apart carpet.
The gut-wrenching sound of the rocket launcher’s trigger clicking reached my ears through the cacophony of crumbling rock and flying bullets. Then, fssshh! as a rocket split the air and exploded where Frida had been standing.
A second crept by while I stood frozen just scanning the blur of smoke coiling from the impacte
d area. Where the hell is she? I thought and peered back at Ayamii – just to make sure. He still sat with his head bowed and fingertips touching. A blue, ephemeral glimmer shone about his crown. My pupils flipped between tiny Ayamii and the gigantic daemonorg monster. I truly hoped the purple humanoid’s ability was strong enough to impact the beast. Hopefully, its physical size would be no hindrance, as the ability worked on its mind. And, obviously, its mental capacity was hardly more evolved than a five-year-old – and even that seemed like a stretch.
“You can do it,” I shouted when Frida’s slender arms appeared from a pile of dirt. I wanted to run and rescue her, but knew it would only increase the risk for both of us. Instead, I slammed the Rap-Attack’s trigger and emptied the mag at the big bastard, tearing off more skin, blood spewing everywhere. “I am the one you want! Hey, bitch-ass, I’m talking to you!”
“Grrraaaahhll!” It turned back to me, its head and most of the body now stripped of skin, exposing blood-dripping white bones underneath.
How’s it still standing, goddammit? Fumbling at my ammo-belt, I came up short. No more Rap-Attack ammo. Shit.
The Pulverizer roared and stepped toward me, but not as sure-footed as earlier. First it mis-stepped, sliding on an edge and into the lava, before swiftly getting back up. Rebalancing its huge body, it blinked as if trying to clear fogginess from its eyes.
“It’s working,” I whispered to myself. A new spark of hope tickled my stomach. “It might actually be working.” Destroying the initial mob of daemonorgs had taken a toll on all our resources – of all the ammo I’d arrived with, only handgun bullets remained. Knowing this was it, I grit my teeth and reloaded both the Daemonorg Light Handguns I had and dual wielded them. Then checked the most important stats:
HP : 45
Armor : 0
MP : 0
Player States:
Poisoned : 00:32:57 until dead
Through gritted teeth, I said hoarsely to myself: “Now or never.”
The Pulverizer was fumbling with his rocket launcher like a drunk person. In my side-view I registered Frida crawling out from the dirt pile in the background. Still kicking. Still alive.
The explosion came out of nowhere. An ear-shattering blast followed by a strangely numb, tearing sensation ripping up the side of my FL-Armor as the force threw me, rocks and a splash of lava out of the way.
-27 HP
Following the weightlessness, my body impacted one of the remaining, erect columns. Stone shattered under the momentum of my back hitting it, then bending the wrong way around the column. A loud crack smacked in my ears, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the column or my back breaking. The ground greeted me roughly as I hit it, pieces of stone rained down from the broken structure.
-9 HP
How the fuck did Darius pack enough explosives to destroy one of these? I thought. The self-destruction ability must have been insanely powerful. Redness flickered across my vision in rapid pulses that matched what felt like electric shocks buzzing around inside the bodysuit. For the first time since the suit’s needles connected to my neck, they hurt – a gnawing pain rubbing against the upper part of my spine.
“…up!” what I recognized to be Frida’s voice reverberated like a disembodied voice around me. “Get up, Dex!”
Snippets of the calm forest where I talked to Lily snuck into my mind. Soothing, orange light sprinkled with birds chirping and the smell of bark and leaves. What would’ve happened if I’d just said ‘fuck it’ and restarted at that point? Backpacking through a mellow forest of peaceful animals and trickling streams in the distance? A good night’s sleep in a fantasy-like tavern after a few ales with some happy-go-lucky gnomes or some shit?
“Dex, get your sci-fi-armored butt up right this instant!” Frida’s voice tore through my daydreaming mind, catapulting me back to the hellish present. “Soon out of ammo!”
The aggression returned like a jolt from a Tesla coil in Red Alert. Hiko was gone. An unknown number of mishaps had been terminated. We simply had to destroy the Daemonorg Pulverizer in order to get out of here before absolutely everything went to shit. And we still hadn’t delivered the Genetic Re-Assembler parts. Even worse, if we didn’t stop it there might not be any community left that needed them.
“Dex,” Frida kept yelling in between the shotgun blasts. “Come oon!”
I pushed through the immovability of my character’s aching body, crawling back up on my feet. Dizzy. Unstable. But I only had to get to the edge of the ground surface, where the lava flowed freely. Five or ten meters. I looked up at the demon and found it amusing to see that it seemed to suffer from the same grogginess as I did. Swaying back and forth, barely able to carry – and much less aim – the rocket launcher.
“Hit him with the grenade,” I shouted at Frida.
“Now?”
I checked with Ayamii who still bowed with fingertips touching. The bright light had grown exponentially, and I flinched looking at it. His upper body vibrated visibly. I wondered how much longer he could keep it going without using all of his MP, or perhaps even losing consciousness. “Do it!”
Finding the handguns I lost while flying through the air luckily wasn’t too hard – they lay only a couple of meters from each other, reflecting the orange-red light of lava. As quickly as I managed without losing balance due to the pain and dizziness, I picked them up, equipped and aimed them at the big beast. Both arms shook from exhaustion, but I made them stay up as I hammered the triggers. The guns jolted, muzzle flames erupted and hungry rounds cut the air and dug into the Pulverizer’s exposed shoulder and ribcage. Bone fragments and blood spattered the surroundings. The surroundings broke apart more each second the beast trampled asunder the frail, fractured ground.
My measly bullets caught his attention, and he clumsily aimed the rocket launcher in my general direction – only to lose focus when Frida’s grenade came arching through the air. Like divine intervention, the Ball-Buster sloped perfectly down the demon’s chest, rolled along one of the weapon straps and finally got stuck between the rocket launcher and his bulging stomach muscles.
For the first time I saw the evil, red eyes open wide. Jaw agape, and its head swiftly looking to the side as if to find a way out of the unfortunate predicament.
Fuhggeddaboutiiit! I thought ecstatically as the grenade’s timer reached zero.
The explosion ripped the rocket launcher out of its connecting straps and blew it straight out of the beast’s grip. It crashed into a rock pile while the beast staggered backwards, flailed its arms to regain balance. A gaping, jagged hole revealed the insides of his stomach – intestines and red ichor flushed out.
“This is my chance,” I whispered, holstered the handguns and found the Ball-Buster grenade. “Let’s hope it’s an extra powerful one.” Side-stepping a bit to align myself with the pool of lava behind the demon, I clenched the grenade, calculated how to throw in order to cancel out my still bad Throwing Weapons ability, and lobbed it at him.
I stared breathlessly as the deadly ball flew through the air in an unexpectedly smooth arch. Still tumbling backwards, the demon flashed an almost scared look at it. The grenade hit his shoulder, bounced off and bumped off his waving arm, resulting in it bouncing back to him and ended up right in his already blasted stomach.
“Brrraaaawwwhhh!!” the Pulverizer roared as the rest of his insides got pulverized from the exploding grenade. The immense power not only nearly killed him, but did exactly what I’d planned for: To send him waggling out of balance. His legs lost all ability to carry the huge body and, stumbling in his hopeless feet, he finally collapsed under his own weight and splashed into the boiling lava behind.
The fiery liquid enveloped and hungrily burned the beast like a hellish baptism. Black smoke whirled from the scorching demon skin, spewing a nauseating aroma of putrid bacon. Like a perfectly suitable cliché, the demon’s hand was the last part to sink into the deep pool of fire, as if waving us off.
I wanted to spit out a c
omment like “To-da-loo, roast beef!” or something equally ridiculous, but couldn’t muster the energy to do it. After making sure Frida and Ayamii still lived, I simply sat down on a piece of rock. Watched the last air bubbles fizzle out in the burning lake, while joyous cheers and clapping reverberated through the area from all the mishaps gathered behind us by the community entrance.
40
Six mishaps escorted us through the gated entrance. While physically supporting our beat up bodies, they led us through the outer reaches of the community’s city. It was vastly larger than I’d imagined, housing everything from marketplaces and restaurants to state buildings and the inhabitants’ homes. Everything shabby and dirty, surely, but still a magnitude more impressive than I’d expected. However, my health being less than 5 HP, redness and flashing lights blurred my vision, and my mind was too foggy to process much of what I saw. Our helpers led us to the community’s hospital – more specifically, the doctor’s office.
After having a swift chat with one of our helpers, the community doctor stood in silence for a moment and watched us, imperceptibly shaking his head. Clothed in a typical white medical coat, he was a blue-skinned humanoid with two arms, one leg and a stump with an attached, jointed metal pole. He smiled widely inside the lush, white beard reaching down to his potbelly. Under circular glasses and white, bushy brows, his eyes shimmered with tears. His lips shook as he whispered: “I have no words.”
I returned his smile – even though I’d much rather just collapse on a soft bed and forget all about everything.
