Ryuk glances to the door. Where’s Gorira? Usually, his brother’s shadow of a henchman is always close by. He yawns and stretches his hands over his head to cover the fact that he’s firing off a message to Hajime.
Ryuk: Where are his men?
Hajime: Outside.
Ryuk: Why is he here?
Hajime: Likely to make a point.
Confidence swells Ryuk’s chest as he says the first thing that comes to his mind. “Cut the bullshit, Kodai, what the fuck do you want?”
“I told you,” he grits, “I’m here to see you.”
“You can message me. You don’t need to come here to see me, especially after what you did the other day. It’s 2075, message me.”
“The bruises on your face are healing nicely.” Kodai rests both elbows on his knees and looks up at Ryuk. He admires his handiwork for another moment before saying, “I’ll make a man out of you yet, if I can ever get you to fight back, that is.”
Confidence boils over again as Ryuk hisses, “Try it, bitch.” His fingers tingle now, a sinking feeling in his chest forces him to lower his shoulders. With a deep breath, he pulls his shoulders back and holds them in place. Stay strong.
“Both of you, relax,” Hajime stands. “There is clearly animosity between you two, and threats will do nothing to quell this animosity.”
“Keep your fucking mouth shut, droid!” Kodai snaps.
“Allow me to remind you that my directive is to protect Ryuk, your brother, whom you should not abuse or assault.”
Kodai laughs as he reaches into his jacket pocket. “I’m going to show you both something that you’ll really like.”
“I’m aware that you have a humgun,” Hajime says.
“A humgun?” asks Ryuk. The tone of his voice activates a rapid search on his iNet feed. Pictures of humstunners appear over a brief description: A humgun, humstunner, or humandroid stunner, is a hand-held device which forcibly overrides a humandroid’s auto-reboot protocol. Once so disabled, a humandroid cannot self-reboot and must be taken to an authorized service and repair facility for an externally induced ‘hard’ reboot.
Kodai brandishes a small silver pistol with a bulbous muzzle. “Take your seat,” he directs the humandroid. “Sit on your hands and keep silent. If you interfere, I will disable you and personally see to it that your reboot process includes a personality wipe.”
Hajime steps away from Kodai and takes his seat.
(0)__(0)
“You’re a real piece of shit,” Ryuk bites his lip, surprised that he has the courage to speak.
“Where were we?” Kodai is on his feet now, his humgun still aimed at Hajime. “Let’s have a simple, pleasant conversation, Ryuk, shall we?”
“Just ... Just leave me alone and let me live my life!” He points a shaky finger at his older brother. “Get the fuck out of my apartment and LET ME LIVE MY LIFE!”
Kodai’s dark eyes narrow in on his brother. “You can live your life all you want, as long as you do what I tell you to do and what mother expects of you. It’s as simple as that.”
“Is this about her?” Ryuk shakes his head in disbelief. “Don’t you see, Kodai? Can’t you understand what’s going on here? You’ll never be our father and you’ll never be able to run the business as well as he did! You’re her puppet! A fucking puppet!”
“Stay there,” Kodai again motions at Hajime with his weapon, “if you try anything, you’re done.” He steps around the coffee table. The afternoon sun is visible over his shoulder, increasing the length of his shadow. “I’m going to forget what you just said. I’m going to forget how you disrespected me. Consider yourself lucky for this. You really don’t know what I’m capable of.”
Ryuk’s knees feels rubbery and weak, but he manages to take a few steps towards his brother. I will stand my ground, he thinks, I will not let you bully me again, he subvocalizes.
“What was that?” Kodai asks.
“Get the fuck out of my home!” Something odd happens to Ryuk’s pane of vision that reminds him of his Extreme Focus skill in Tritania. The corners dim and he suddenly feels as if he’s looking through Kodai to the coffee table behind him directly at …
Kodai takes a step closer to his younger brother. “Are you challenging me?”
“I’ll tell you one thing you aren’t capable of … ” The words flow out of Ryuk’s mouth, seemingly of their own volition. He closes the distance between them. “You aren’t … aren’t capable of completing college! I know what happened at NYU, you lying sack of shit!”
Kodai is speechless as Ryuk slams both hands against his older brother’s chest, pushing him backwards into the glass coffee table.
The sound of shattering glass and the thud of Kodai hitting the floor loom large in the apartment. Hajime springs to his feet and plucks the humgun from Kodai’s grasp just as the door explodes inward.
Gorira leads the charge gun first, and is quickly met by Hajime, who disarms the man-mountain with insolent ease, spins him to act as a shield, and tucks the muzzle of Gorira’s own gun up under his ear. “Pick up your employer and leave, all of you.” Hajime instructs the other two. “Do it now.”
The two help Kodai up out of the wreckage of the glass coffee table.
Blood dribbles from a gash in his palm and there’s a tear along the sleeve of his Kiton suit jacket. With a wordless cry of rage, he leaps for Ryuk, only to be restrained by his own two men. Kodai screams again, flicks blood on the floor, raises a single finger at his younger brother and grits his teeth as he says, “I won’t forget this! You will never disrespect me again!” He pulls his arm free from his goons and storms into Ryuk’s room.
There is the unmistakable sound of electronic equipment being smashed, and Ryuk knows instantly what Kodai has done.
Ryuk’s legs go wobbly as Kodai steps out of the bedroom.
“Fuck you.” Kodai throws the broken NV Visor into his chest; it bounces off and lands at his feet. “This isn’t over.”
With that, he marches right out the front door, followed by his two thugs. He doesn’t so much as look at Gorira, who is still held by Hajime.
Once Kodai and his posse are out, Hajime releases Gorira but keeps the gun trained on him. “Leave.”
“My gun,” Gorira says.
“Later.” Hajime motions to the door. “Leave now.”
Chapter 26: Kaizen
“Well, that certainly went poorly,” Hajime observes.
Ryuk nods and swallows a breath of what has to be the freshest, most life-sustaining gulp of air he’s ever tasted. His brother’s blood spatters the wall and the carpet here and there; his broken NV Visor is more liberally smeared with it.
“Order another one.” Hajime drops the magazine from Gorira’s hand cannon and places it on a side table, racks the slide and catches the oversized round in mid-air. He examines the humgun for a moment, noting its make and model. “If you order a new visor on Rakuten, it’ll be here within the hour. Your chair will take a day to arrive.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Ryuk manages to say.
A sense of freedom washes over him and for once, he doesn’t feel like logging in. His avatar can handle the zombie battles for now, and he’ll see Tamana soon enough anyway. He should be ordering a new visor, he should be coming down from the adrenaline high, he should be doing something other than standing here, frozen as if he’s been struck in the chest by a time marble. But as he stands there a thought becomes crystal clear – none of this matters.
Once he is done here, he can spend eternity with Tamana. The real world is irrelevant. His feud with his brother? Pointless. His family business? Immaterial.
But an RPC isn’t really you.
And the cold, hard corollary to that comes to him unbidden – it isn’t really Tamana either.
Ryuk knows this, knows that she is simply a highly complex arrangement of ones and zeroes created by D-NAS, that she is really no more alive than Hajime. But knowing and truly understanding the implications of s
uch a statement are very different things.
He stands in his living room and surveys the chaos before him, as the thoughts come at him a mile-a-minute, Ryuk makes the choice right then to take command of his future. He’ll become an RPC and he’ll live forever that way, but until that day comes he will live without fear or regret. He will seize his own reality in a way he has never contemplated before. He will stand up to Kodai; he will attend the Proxima school that he’s been eyeing for the past year now; he won’t follow in his father’s footsteps, but he will learn about manipulating power.
“I want to keep the gun,” he tells Hajime. “I mean, guns, I want to keep them both.”
“Oh?” Hajime considers this for a moment. “Do you think that when the time comes you will have the resolve to use them?”
“I really don’t know; I just want to feel safe and I don’t want to be a … ” He wants to say ‘target’ but this doesn’t see like the right word. Neither does the word ‘victim’.
Ryuk bites his lip as he takes in the humandroid standing before him. Hajime is calm and collected, as if he’s just woken up from a pleasant nap and is on his way to a meditation class. Meanwhile, he’s on pins and needles, in a weird state of existential self-reflection, sure, but there isn’t much he can verbalize at the moment, which makes it strange that the only request he has is to weapon up.
“I’ve ordered you a replacement visor from Rakuten,” Hajime informs him. “It should be here within the next hour.”
“Are you trying to distract me?” Ryuk asks.
“No, I’m trying to comfort you. If you are interested in the weapons, I will show you how to use them. Are you hungry?”
Ryuk notices the prompt doesn’t have his manga-stylized face in the corner this time, likely because Hajime is trying to be serious. And this is how he shows me? Even amidst the destruction in the room, his existential bullshit, and the adrenaline still pulsing in his veins, Ryuk has to smile. “I’m not hungry.”
“Tea?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you sit?” Hajime suggests. “Not there, at the dining room table. I can tell that you are thinking deeply about something.”
“You can tell, huh?” Ryuk takes a seat at the table. He hears Hajime click on the plastic kettle to boil water for tea and he listens to the water bubble and hiss until Hajime’s hand on his shoulder draws his attention. “I may not be human, but I can ‘sense’ things, if you expand your definition of the word ‘sense’ to mean ‘perceive chemical changes and other indicators of human emotion.’ Whatever is on your mind, let me say this.”
Ryuk looks up at him.
“You did well back there, Ryuk. You stood your ground and finally were able to emphasize the difference between you and your brother, by overcoming your fear of him and being cognizant of your surroundings. Don’t think I didn’t see you quickly glance to the coffee table. Don’t think I didn’t see you approach him in a way that you’d be in a position to push Kodai into it. That took guts, it took cunning – something that you humans have and that I do not fully possess. We humandroids are logical entities that can do many things, but the sort of quick, visceral cunning you exhibited comes only with tens of thousands of years of evolution.”
Hajime pauses to let his words sink in. “But I gave you two quotes to consider, the second being faced with a choice, do both. This lesson is far from complete and if I’m not mistaken, I think your ultimate quest is far from over.”
With that, he turns to the kitchen to make Ryuk a cup of green tea.
Chapter 27: Shogyo Mujo
Ryuk grips the sleek, biodegradable black box that the NV Visor comes in.
The visor has been over-packaged, and it takes him a good five minutes to get through the tape, rip through the inner box, undo the felt bag, take off the plastic wrapping, tear off the plastic covering the visor, unpack the wireless DHDNI, undo multiple twist ties, and remove the lining cover from the inside of the visor.
After placing the wireless DHDNI on top of a crescent-shaped Proxima router, he lies down on his bed and gets under the single sheet. The warmth he felt earlier is gone, replaced by a bitter cold that shows no signs of relenting. The blanket should help, but he turns his heating unit on over iNet just to be sure. After setting the automatic time-off to an hour later, Ryuk relaxes onto his pillow, takes a deep breath, and puts the NV Visor over his head.
The familiar tone and the Proxima logo appears, welcoming him.
The visor has already synced with the life chip implanted in Ryuk’s head, and the Tritania desktop he’s chosen takes shape and presents him with a live feed of his guild’s progress and a spawning point. A prompt appears, he selects ‘yes’, and sine waves slowly start to ripple across his pane of vision. Feedback picks up, and after a moment of this, his consciousness shifts and Ryuk is suddenly back in his avatar’s body, joining the Mitherfickers in the town square. The Aramis Security Force has also joined them and are methodically eliminating the walking dead.
Ryuk Matsuzaki Level 13 Ballistics Mage
HP: 232/378
ATK: 91
MATK: 120
DEF: 69
MDF: 42
LUCK: 10
FeeTwix Fajer Level 17 Berserker Mystic
HP: 129/600
ATK: 140
MATK: 28
DEF: 81
MDF: 40
LUCK: 13
Hiccup Level 12 Shield Thief
HP: 303/525
ATK: 76
MATK: 13
DEF: 156
MDF: 74
LUCK: 25
Zaena Morozon Level 16 Brawler Assassin
HP: 233/563
ATK: 165
MATK: 8
DEF: 93
MDF: 28
LUCK: 14
Tamana Nakamura Level 10 White Warrior
HP: 180/367
MANA: 121/233
ATK: 84
MATK: 19
DEF: 61
MDF: 95
LUCK: 4
He swipes the stats away after checking their new levels – his due to auto-leveling – and looks to Tamana, who’s hacked and stacked a credible body count. She’s a bit bruised and battered, but Ryuk sees that she’s better off than some of the others.
FeeTwix, his eyes solid black, gives Ryuk the thumbs up and fires a burst of unforgiving metal into the face of a zomb-orc. Not far from the Swede, Hiccup axes his way one-handed through an onslaught of zombie kindergarteners while nursing a healing potion with his non-mechanical hand. Across from him, the Thulean swordswoman single-mindedly serves up a second death to all of those who come within reach of her four whirling blades.
“How was it out there?” Tamana asks. An iridescent light twists up her free hand as she holds it in the air. After a halo forms, a pixelated snowburst of white magic shoots into the air that sprinkles onto the group. +75 HP!
“Never mind.” Ryuk pops out a magazine of black marbles and replaces it with a magazine of molten marbles. He aims at an approaching orc zombie of unusual size and melts its head off.
Instakill!
“Look at these fickin’ things – they’re like rabid fickin’ rats!” Hiccup sends another necrotic preschooler off for a dirt nap, finishes his healing potion, and overhand tosses it into the face of the nearest zombie ankle biter. Ryuk flambés the last one of the group with a molten marble.
Instakill!
With his goat-horned helmet tucked under his arm, the goblin rakes his mechanical fingers through a serious case of pink helmet-hair. He huffs and sighs, and fixes his gaze on Ryuk. “Seriously,” he says, “I’m fickin’ sick of killing zombies. We got some EXP and leveled up a bit, now let’s get back to the Mondegreen and get a bit of rest before tonight’s festivities.”
Tamana nods, proud of herself. “I’m almost caught up with you guys!”
Ryuk: They want to go back. Tired of fighting zombies?
FeeTwix: Ha! I was number three on Dead City’s leader
board. Number three, the two above me were RPCs. I never get tired of killing zombies, nor should anyone. However, if you guys want to bail, I’m down.
Ryuk watches as Zaena gives FeeTwix a quick nod. He gets the sense that while he may talk a lot of smack, FeeTwix is actually running out of steam. His tommy gun disappears and he lifts his finger to select a new spawning point. “See you on the other side.”
Zaena and FeeTwix dematerialize in a flash of pixeled goodness; Tamana and Hiccup are up next, and the last one to bail is Ryuk.
The five guildmates take shape in their cramped room at the Mondegreen Hostel. As soon as they do, and before Hiccup can fart, burp, chug a healing potion, or make a ribald remark, they hear a faint knock at the door.
“I’ve brought refreshments.” Jim the hostelier bows slightly at Hiccup after the goblin has opened the door, and with a courtly flourish whisks the silver cover from a tray of dainties. Steam gently wafts from a platter of dragon wings and assorted hors d’oeuvres.
“Listen up, Mitherfickers,” Hiccup calls over his shoulder, “the dragon wings are mine; the rest is up for grabs.”
“No need to be greedy; there are plenty more,” Jim tells him.
Hiccup steps up to Jim and gives him the goblin eye. “If there’s more,” he says with a growl, “why didn’t you bring them?”
Jim narrows his eyes, his good natured smile fades. “If these do not meet your exacting standards, I can always take them away and you can find your own meal.”
“Um, no, these’ll be just fine, thank-you very much.” Hiccup gracefully takes the tray from him. “I was just fickin’ with you, Jimmy ol’ pal. To make things easier, I’ll go ahead and take the entire tray. The rest can have whatever they’d like. Shit, before I forget.” A necklace appears in his mechanical hand. “Twixy, this is for you to give to Liz, as you requested.”
He tosses the necklace to FeeTwix, who turns to Zaena with a sheepish smile on his face. “That’s not exactly how I was hoping that would go.”
Fantasy Online_Hyperborea Page 29
