Equalize

by Ryan DeBruyn

  “No, what I am saying is we need to sneak past these tiny, pitiful golems on the outskirts of the Territory to approach the slightly bigger one in the middle! Then after we arrive, we may need to set off a few plasma grenades to draw attention to our position! Really, it’s a simple excursion. Like a long walk on the beach with a mild chance of death, dismemberment, and possible pancakes at the end?” Rocky couldn’t help but return the snark. His past girlfriends had spoken sarcasm fluently, and these were some of his favorite moments of banter.

  It was the only time Rocky felt witty, as they continued to add to the embellishing Mission Impossible endeavor, Joe silently watched the two and couldn’t help but feel like he was intruding. The sexual tension in the air continued rising by increments as they teased and added to an already ridiculous task. Before the moment got too far, Joe said, “Gods above, would you two just kiss and get it over with already?”

  Then just like all these moments seem to go, the two looked at each other, cheeks flushing as they realized they had gotten carried away. Further embarrassment was ensured when they realized the insinuation Joe had just made, and they both sputtered, trying to get out denials. Sela put the nail in the coffin, however, saying, “Whoa, easy, Joe. Rocky and I are just friends.”

  Marilynn Monroe! Seriously! A whole new world and I just got friend zoned. I volunteer Joe as the sacrifice for this next part… Seriously, though, would him shooting the beacon work?

  Sela stood there, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, unwilling to break the silence. Rocky pouted in silent contemplation after the bullet wound he had just received. Joe partially felt terrible for the two but silently thanked God that he had put an end to their ridiculous flirting.

  I hope some sort of creature comes out of the ground and swallows me whole. I think that’s a safe exit from this position!

  The image sparked something in Rocky, and he suddenly jerked his head up, staring in multiple directions. The change was so sudden it startled everyone, like a re-energized machine powering back on. You could practically see the gears turning in Rocky’s mind.

  Joe, who had never seen this expression on Rocky’s face, looked excited. Sela, on the other hand, groaned inwardly and sent a mental bet to Azoth, “Bet you he comes up with a plan that is a few gems short of a crystal!”

  Azoth sent back, “Azoth likes shinies,” and Sela smiled despite herself as the pet also sent an image of himself curled up on the ground next to Jason, focusing on the shiny Staff of Focus. Sela really enjoyed her druidic mental connection to the Chimera and was thankful for the moments of joy it brought to herself and Rocky. She again was left marveling at her new class and the benefits it provided her that she never could have guessed at in her previous life.

  Rocky, who just this morning would have walked uncaring into danger like a berserker, had regained much of his composure. The dark looks he had worn during brief moments of silence told her he was changed drastically from the naïve man she had first met. However, in her opinion, Azoth was a root cause for his temporary retreat from the razor's edge of uncaring insanity, and she thanked Gaia for the pet’s presence.

  Then Rocky opened his mouth, and she was forced to contemplate his sanity despite her previous thoughts. “Let’s start a territorial war! Joe, you are going to ride Azoth over to the crocodile's den and start riling them up with your laser. Once you have them aggravated enough, tow them into the golems. See if you can get them to the titanic golem.” His excited tone did not match the dire looks the two companions gave him.

  Rocky had something similar to this work entirely in his favor in the past.

  Let the titanic monsters duke it out and, in the confusion, just sneak in and plant a grenade. What could go wrong?

  The six mechanoids chose that moment to start a bombardment of the zone from the safety of the sky. This tactic looked pretty practiced as the beams’ timing was spaced out relatively well, and Rocky had a suspicion that this was how the soulless humanoid machines had been leveling to date. This clear shift of advantage forced the group to begin panicking as an imaginary clock began to tick.

  The trio stood with their mouths gaping open, and it was Sela who spoke first, “Do you think that will work?” She pointed at Corsair, her voice suspicious like she could sense something was off about the whole situation but not sure what. Her tone had the effect of forcing the group to think and question the acts of the airborne faction.

  If this tactic was effective, wouldn’t they already have captured the city? So this was fruitless then?

  The evenly spaced beams continued, and due to the strength of firepower, Rocky doubted that it was ineffective. That’s when it hit him; the group was able to defeat the golems using this tactic, but it was plodding in its progress. Seeing the golems in front of him and their thick layer of earth and grass made him think that the laser fire would struggle to cut through it and damage the core underneath. Though this tactic was slow, it may eventually succeed.

  “I think it will work in time, yes,” Rocky said into the stretching silence. This essentially put a further problem on the trio’s plate. Even if the device was broken, if Corsair retrieved it, then it would probably be salvageable.

  A few minutes later, Rocky queried, “Does anyone have any better ideas?”

  That’s how Rocky and Sela had found themselves attempting to sneak through the downtown core of Ottawa using Stealth. More often than Rocky liked, a giant golem would throw a rock precariously close to the position that they had occupied a moment before, somehow sensing something was moving through the area. They held hands, sticking together and sometimes pulling each other out of dangerous situations.

  The occasional ground tremors and massive booms let them know that the battle in the center was still going on and spurred them forward.

  The other issue the two noticed and communicated over the earpieces when a moment presented itself was the massive increase in Ether cost of Stealth.

  The increase in Ether cost had forced the two to take breaks whenever their Ether pools got too low, which seemed to happen to Rocky far more often than Sela. Her vast intellect stat made her pool able to sustain the skill longer under the increase due to the nearby monsters. He was upset every time they had to find cover for the group to wait out the patrolling golems in the safety of a rubble formation.

  The sun was descending before the group caught sight of the raging battle, and in that time, they had been notified by Azoth that the Chimera was now playing with the green-tooths, which Rocky assumed meant crocodiles. The fact that Joe no longer had a communication earpiece was a frustration that better planning would have solved. Rocky cursed himself again for not purchasing spares and thinking through possible eventualities like one being destroyed.

  This, of course, made timing what came next challenging as Sela and Rocky watched from the shadow of a massive boulder what was transpiring around the beacon. The good news was that the beacon didn’t seem to be working, as it didn’t have any parts moving or lights flashing that the two noticed. The awful news was that two golems were already down on the ground, missing limbs and, in one case, having a giant hole where its core probably had resided. Even now, the group of robo-humans targeted the second downed creature’s heart, slowly chipping away at the Bio-Armor.

  The largest lead golem was displayed in all of its titanic glory and easily stood taller than the tallest building in Ottawa had been before the Ether apocalypse. Even craning his neck up, Rocky was looking vertically up at its side profile more than seeing over its cranium. This did have the effect of forcing Corsair’s group to fly at a height where targeting became drastically more difficult, but so far, it was still a fight Corsair would eventually win.

  Rocky used Analyze on the massive creature.

  Terrasses de la Chaudiere

  Master-Tower Guardian

  Level 72

  Bio-Enhanced

  Boss

  Moderate Analyze failed to show an additional piece of infor
mation.

  Rocky noticed that this towering monster was not the Territorial leader and in fact just a Boss, which made him start breathing fast. It would seem he had sent Joe to piss off the true leader. It further made him light-headed because he couldn’t see a way for it to defeat the mosquito-like pests which targeted its troops, so the war he was about to start would only further advantage the robots.

  During his panic, Rocky glanced around and noticed something bizarre in the direction of the river and what had once been Parliament Hill. In the distance, he could see five strange figures seated on earth chairs. Each one had a massive weapon resting across its lap.

  There seemed to be five of them, and each figure was accented in stylized green armor. Considering that each of the parliament buildings had been covered in an oxidized copper roof that was green in color made Rocky realize what the five golems were. Whatever force was responsible for golems had created five very unique creatures from the capital buildings of Canada.

  This sight greatly helped relax him, and a moment later, a frustrated chuff sounded in his mind, “Stupid lizards go under water, then in cave under hill. They are scaredy babies! Azoth goes after them!”

  Both Sela and Rocky mentally shouted, “Nooo!” at the deadly Chimera, which shocked him into staying out of the cave. There was no way he would survive head to head versus one of the monstrous crocodiles underground.

  It was Sela who alleviated some further stress for Rocky as she whispered, “Weren’t there six of them?” into his ear. This decreased his anxiety for an entirely different reason, as her breath caressed his ear and neck.

  Rocky’s muscles locked up unbidden and combined with his hyperventilation and fast heart rate from a moment before, he nearly fell over, his second brain thinking about an act that didn’t fit in with their current surroundings.

  Snap the Donald Duck out of it! Ancestor, remember?

  Replaying her words, he counted the flying mechanoids and realized that only four were airborne. Scanning the ground, he was confused until his foot struck something and he looked down. A semi-mechanical hand lay by his foot, its accompanying arm protruding from under the boulder they hid behind. The rock was easily ninety feet in diameter, and Rocky gulped audibly as he realized how flimsy of a hiding place they had chosen.

  Assuming that the two robots had been smacked out of the sky by flying boulders thrown by the Chaudiere, then maybe this would work out after all. Just after thinking this, the ground shook as the creature sunk a monstrous steel hand through the topsoil only to emerge a moment later, heaving up another massive boulder which it lobbed into the air, barely missing two of the four remaining flies.

  The return fire bounced relatively harmlessly off of the boss’s thick soil armor, and it began slowly moving to a new area of land, the projectile still arcing a deceptively slow path through the sky. A moment later, the boom of the boulder rejoining the earth sounded out like artillery fire.

  The perceived equilibrium shifted again a moment later when Corsair suddenly fired off a few tiny missiles at some Journeyman golems. These missiles created massive explosions that removed limbs from the creatures and was followed by Corsair swooping down and taking some metal from the corpse of one dead golem. As he returned back to his previous position, dodging swipes from nearby enemies, his body was absorbing the alloy, its silvery substance flowing liquidly over the blood red alloy of his new body.

  A closer inspection showed Rocky that the downed golem’s corpse was missing metal in numerous patches. It would seem that the new body of Corsair was able to consume metal and spit out Ether fueled missiles. The saving grace was that these missiles took time to produce and seemed to be a recent addition to his arsenal or Azoth would have been struck from the sky in the earlier pursuit.

  “Azoth bored!” was mentally shouted, causing both Sela and Rocky to jump and look in the direction of their flying friends. Azoth was coasting along a few kilometers away. From his back, occasional laser blasts and fireballs fired down towards the river.

  The fact that Jason had hitched a ride back into the fight with Azoth was evident, and Rocky was livid. His brain was actively looking for anything he could say that would force Azoth and the two on his back to exit the area. Then his anger drained and was cut off as the earth under his feet rose a foot or more, seeming to be displaced from underneath.

  The ground rumbled slightly again, and Rocky was further confused. There hadn’t been another boulder projectile yet. Under his feet and in places all over the city, he could see the ground rising minutely, almost slithering like a snake.

  Or another type of reptile. Oh twiglets and berries!

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The fight continued above ground, its members unaware of what was burrowing under the earth and rubble below them. Rocky whispered to Sela, “I think the Spawns of Draksus are below us.” He pointed at the shifting soil, and her eyes grew wide.

  Mentally, he told Azoth to keep riling up any of the creatures they saw. Whatever was causing them to burrow in this direction had to be due to the attacks Joe and Jason were making. Rocky wondered if there was some way to force them up.

  In his inventory, he had a few options that might accomplish that task, and he was leaning towards killing two birds with one stone. Pulling out two plasma grenades, he handed one to Sela. “Think you can land that thing on the beacon?”

  Sela just smiled and began counting down from five with her free hand. Rocky grinned sheepishly, and when the count reached zero, he depressed the button and let fly. Both grenades fell within five feet of the beacon, but only one stuck to it.

  Rocky told himself he had confused which one had been his throw. Sela’s fist pump and showboating didn’t mean she actually knew. It just meant that she was taking credit. Rocky couldn’t have been the one to miss.

  Nope, not possible.

  Moments later, the explosions triggered simultaneously, and the beacon was bathed in two miniature suns. The mechanoids up above ceased their barrage and watched the area. As a group, they saw the somewhat intact beacon exit the explosion area and blast into the boss golem, his bio-armor parting around the shrapnel before closing back up.

  Rocky was momentarily stunned and looked at Sela, who wore a similar expression. “Did that just seriously happen?” he asked the world in general. This was quite possibly the luckiest break he could have hoped for.

  A shout of frustration sounded from the sky before a volume-enhanced voice called out, “I am going to find you, whoever you are! I am going to make you wish you had died on that first day of this apocalypse. Do you hear me?!”

  Corsair then focused in on something in front of him while making strange hand motions. Rocky, who was unsure what was happening, tilted his head in confusion. Then he motioned to Sela that they should leave, and they both entered Stealth.

  A retreating step later, a thousand red projectiles exited Corsair and flew in every direction. Each one seeming to descend in a different parabolic arc to land on the ground. Wherever one landed, they would suddenly spring to life before burrowing into the ground.

  Rocky reached out an arm and found Sela’s form in Stealth also frozen. Together they returned to cover and exited Stealth. “What was that?”

  “Landm–” Sela began to say before a massive boom sounded from where a golem stepped onto one of the submerged devices.

  Rocky swore and looked up at Corsair who was again making strange motions in front of him.

  Is that piece of soulless metal assigning Class Skills now!?

  The rhetorical question was answered a moment later when, suddenly, six small, red balls detached from his body. This time, they began moving away from his form, almost seeming to be performing search patterns. Corsair had just purchased some sort of detection ability.

  Corsair dove to Earth to collect some more steel before ascending quickly back to his previous perch and flipping through invisible screens again. Rocky knew that the situation was getting worse by the se
cond, and he looked at Sela. “If we don’t get out of here now, I don’t think we will have another chance.”

  Luckily, very few mines had landed in the direction away from the massive golem.

  Suddenly, one of the small lighthouses that Corsair had just created began madly beeping and flashing above a distinct rise in the ground. Rocky, who knew what that bulge signified, took a step closer to the boulder he hid behind. If Corsair responded the way he thought, he would…

  Missiles erupted from Corsair. “Found you! You sneaky pieces of shit. I am going to kill you like I did your friend in the compound!” His voice crowed with delight and anger.

  Rocky just watched in slow motion as the missiles rushed towards the mound, breath held. At the last moment, he reached out and grabbed Sela, pulling her close to him and their cover. His plan was literally about to blow up in his face or Corsair’s. If there was ever a time to wish for a natural twenty, it was now.

  The eruption of fire the missiles created almost hid the massive, scaly shape that erupted from the newly created hole. Soil flew up high into the air, and the hide of the reptile glowed with reflected crimson light, almost making it look like a ruby dragon. A moment later, it roared and breathed in a massive lungful of air.

  The fire which, moments ago, covered most of the creature flickered and puttered out, the breath sucking in the flames. Rocky, who would have already fallen due to the shaking earth if not for his death grip on the boulder, looked around.

  All over the battlefield, massive shapes were emerging from the soil, flinging dirt and debris skyward. Each one was easily the size of the smaller golems present, and those were ten stories tall. Rocky used Analyze on the scaly, orange creatures.