by Reapers
I run to the left, keeping my eyes trained on the Thulean battle babe.
Her undamaged ghost limb sweeps out at me at lightning speed. I hit the AA bar brakes and time slows; the Reaper skull’s targeting reticle locates the arm and locks on. I equip item 213, my 40W Phased Plasma Rifle. Handshake completes and I fire, more or less shooting her ghost limb clean off with an emphasis on more.
She cries out in pain, falls to her side.
“Damn,” I say as her translucent limb whips around like an inflated sky dancer and spews invisible blood. “That was cooler than I thought it would be.”
The crowd doesn’t seem to agree. They ain’t feeling me, and I blast a plasma bolt over my shoulder into the stands just to shut ‘em up.
Sophia: Careful! There are people out there!
Me: You’ve been in Proxima Worlds for too long, and that’s coming from me.
A quick glance over my shoulder and I see my blast connected – there’s a smoldering, blackened slash and a scattering of NPCs scrambling away from the blast site. Gotta love that level of detail.
The Thulean dragon rider stands and hobbles towards me. She bares her teeth and exposes her overdeveloped canines. “Muukhai jikh makh!”
“Yeah – blah-blah, more magic Thulean talk-talk; we’re all so impressed. Let me guess – My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Sophia: She called you a filthy stupid dog.
Rocket: It burns, it burns!
“How ‘bout some English, Green Meanie?”
“Commoner scum … ” She spits blood. “You’ve dishonored us all today with your rule-breaking and cowardly fighting style. You give much credence to the widely held belief that commoners are not fit to visit Ultima Thule.” A whip appears in her hand. With the flick of her wrist, it transmogrifies into a golden trident.
“Jeez, for an NPC you sure take this shit seriously,” I tell her.
Sophia: Thuleans aren’t NPCs in the traditional sense.
Me: ???
Rocket: Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about that! They’re like Ray Steampunk – actual people – well, former people. Most developers who have died in real life have their characters enThuleanated. So they’re NPC, but they were once human, so RPCs.
Me: RPCs?
Rocket: Reborn Player Characters.
Me: Why the hell didn’t you tell me that? And why the hell didn’t you tell me about this acronym earlier? It’s like you’re making this stuff up as we go along!
Rocket: You didn’t ask. X_X
“Face me,” the Thulean broad says. The ghost limb that I slashed earlier extends from her back. “Without your guns.”
“Mano y mano, eh?” I ask her, my hands behind my back so I can do some quick scrolling. Figuring it can’t hurt any, I equip my newest sword, item 579.
I don’t give her time to sneer at my ridiculously large weapon. Once it grows to full capacity – five times my size – I leap into the air and bring it down hard against the soil. A ripple of blazing yellow energy cuts through the ground and creates an immense beam of light aimed directly at her.
Chapter Nineteen
I glance down and watch my hands and my body take form. I’m back in the locker room. Chrono is sitting on the bench next to Aiden. He’s examining Aiden’s Scissorsword, commenting on the metal. Veenure is crouched against the wall, her eyes closed and her chin extended upwards. Only Sophia seems to care or notice I’m back.
“Great job pissing all of Ultima Thule off,” she says instead of hello.
Rocket: Great job cutting a Thulean dame in half.
Me: Somehow, it doesn’t work when you say it.
Rocket: Thulean broad?
Sophia: Barf.
“How come no one else is watching?” I ask.
“We can’t,” says Veenure. “Sophia has been giving us play by play through Rocket’s screenshots,” she says.
“And you guys can’t see them?” I ask Veenure. “It seems like you’d be able to.”
“The solo rounds aren’t broadcast in real-time due to the violence. People are able to watch them after, on VineTwitch and other sites like it, but those are edited down. Rocket’s in via a PN loophole hackers often exploit.”
I look up at the ceiling. “Rocket, add Veenure to our network.”
Rocket: We’ll need to keep the Dream Team talk down.
Me: Fine. If anyone else joins – Frances or Doc – let them know ahead of time.
Rocket: Done.
Veenure: Is this it? Finally I’m in your PN chat!
Me: It’s not so private; we just haven’t gotten around to adding you in. There was a, um, glitch or something. Anyway, welcome.
Rocket: There was?
Me: Yes, the glitch is named Rocket and he is the administrator who kept forgetting to add you.
Sophia says, “We can talk here, you know, in the locker room.”
Me: Yeah, it’s getting a bit meta. Say, someone needs to check on Zedic; this person can also update him on the progress of the Reality Splitter.
Sophia: I knew we shouldn’t trust your Cyber Noir NPC buddies.
Me: They’ll get all the metal, just give them some time. It ain’t easy going through poop.
Veenure: I can check on him. The OMIB is twice as interesting as sitting in this locker room.
“Good,” Sophia says, “I’d rather stay here just in case you win.”
“Just in case?”
“Just in case you win and need some help with navigating Saidukan Royalty.”
“Fine, fine,” I tell the pushy broad. “You’ll be here to hold my hand; Veenure can hang with Zedic in the OMIB.”
~*~
Me: So I have two more fights left, correct? And I can’t lose.
Sophia: You’re getting better at this.
Me: What if my final opponent hasn’t lost any fights and I beat him or her?
Sophia: It doesn’t matter. This rule doesn’t apply to the final fight.
“Got it,” I say as I look out at the crowd. Someone starts The Wave on the giant side and it makes its way over to the normal-sized people side. It is almost full-circle when the cage door across from me opens up and none other than BramToker himself steps out.
“What are the odds?” I ask the sky.
Rocket: I recognize that guy!
The vampiric shitbird that stole our victory over the Frog King raises one fist into the air and the crowd cheers. He strikes another pose, pulling his cape up so it covers the bottom half of his face. The ladies in attendance particularly like this – they swoon and scream and faint. I’ll never understand why the ladybirds like vampires so much. They suck.
I instantly equip an old favorite, Hackie, item 554, my very first mutant hack, with freezing capabilities given to me by Ray Steampunk. The weapon’s strange voice sounds off in my head as soon as I equip it.
It’s about time! Why have you been avoiding me?
“Hiya, Hackie,” I tell the weapon as it twists up my arm, forming a two-barreled blaster on the other end. A switch on my arm toggles to NORM and locks into place.
I’m starving!
“Yeah, I get it, you’re a hungry mutant hack.”
Rocket: Who are you talking to?
You’ve neglected my hunger.
“Quit your yappin’,” I tell it as BramToker levitates over to me. “You’ll get your chance. Do you want to freeze him or do you want a slice?”
A slice.
“I find it hard to believe a nooby asshole like you made it this far in the tournament,” BramToker says with a scowl. His frock coat has a dark red trim; his matching vest is tighter than OJ’s glove. Consider it his Sunday worst, a late Victorian get-up that would most definitely twiddle the floppy sconge of a cosplay aficionado.
“So, are you supposed to be Edward or Bella?” I ask him.
“Says the level sixteen player in an orange life jacket.”
Sophia: Careful, he’s level seventy and he’s a player ki
ller.
Me: You think I’m scared of some basement dwelling PKer? Me and Hackie got this.
Sophia: You named your mutant hack hackie?
Me: What’s wrong with that?
“Your little freeze trick won’t work this time,” BramToker snarls. A glowing blue fireball appears in his hand. It spreads up his arms and over his body, forming a flaming body shield that is semitransparent.
I’ve got this.
Hackie morphs into a wickedly serrated blade design that would do credit to a Rambo knife’s Rambo knife. The points on the outer edge grow until they resemble giant ripsaw teeth. The mutant hack is panting in anticipation, its form pulsating like an irregular heartbeat.
The trumpet sounds and Barnabas Collins launches himself at me, his fingers forming sharp claws. He gives me a swipe across the face that would leave a really cool scar if this fight were taking place in the real world.
A quick glance at my life bar tells me that I’ve been poisoned or something by his attack. I’m already down by a tenth.
Poof goes a purple cloud of smoke as a tiny bat appears.
“Is that the route we’re going?” I ask as the bat zips up into the air.
FEED ME!
“Relax, Hackie. I’ve got to get this bat out of the air first.”
Before I can equip anything else, Hackie’s blade stretches into a pair of long, sharp fingers. Symbiosis on fleek, my hand is pretty much black and gold spaghetti noodles at this point. The fingers, if you can call them that, twist and curve through the air after the bat. I spread my legs wide to ground myself, keeping my free hand on my hacked shoulder for added control.
Hackie don’t play – it takes all of thirty seconds for it to catch up with BramToker’s bat. They’re moments from ultimate collision when BramToker does his disappear in a cloud of purple smoke act again.
The Damnpire reappears in front of me, real close this time, and the blue flame covering his body intensifies as he comes in for a punch. AA bar activated, I catch his punch with my free hand, which adds even more damage to my diminishing life bar. I squeeze his fist, hang on and wait for hackie to return to its normal, pointy form. In an instant I’m able to hack the blade deep into Count Dorkula’s gut and blast undead blood and guts out through the back of his clichéd vampire costume.
Rocket: Screenshot!
Sophia: There’s something wrong with you two.
Rocket: Kick Nosferatu’s necrotic nether region!
“Good use of this week’s vocabulary words, Big R!” The serrations rip bone and tissue as I kick the Bramster off the blade. He stumbles back, but stays on his feet.
I’m not finished!
“You’ll get another taste,” I assure my ravenous accoutrement. BramToker pulls back, lifts his hand over his head and casts a healing spell. The sparkly, flashy thingies that swirl around him heal up the hole in his belly and jumps his life bar up to 80% – he’s doing better than I am now.
Hackie forms a double barrel blaster and fires both barrels. My vampire buddy dodges most of it, but we still get a piece of him and his life bar drops back down a couple of percent.
Equip your other hack, Goldie.
“Double or nothing?”
You know me so well.
“You had me at hello.”
Item 571, The Golden Goosinator, appears in my other hand and quickly forms into a single barrel blaster with a circumference the size of beach volleyball. For shiggles, Item 577, the Attla Spider Venom Hose Gun, materializes on my back and plugs into Goldie. The crowd jeers, pelts the fighting grounds with overpriced concession food, cheap weapons, souvenir bobble heads and half-empty flagons of Horse Piss Ale.
Rocket: If you blast him with that, he won’t be able to log in for a week.
Me: Oh, is that what this does? I keep mistaking it for the vampire self-esteem embiggener.
Sophia: That’s cruel! He’s a player character – he may live most of his life in Tritania. He may depend on the Proxima Galaxy for the majority of his social interactions.
Me: Really? Let me quick check the Give-a-Shit meter. Nope, didn’t even twitch.
All Count Twerkula can do as I blast and spray him is writhe and twist and dodge and flip and burn through his AA; I don’t give him the time to even consider counter attacking. Once his AA is spent up, it’s just a matter of time, and Hackie gets a good one in that blows daylight in where the moon don’t shine. Goldie zaps the crap out of him, followed by the epic money shot from the Attla Hose Gun attachment.
The Tokemeister does not easily reconcile himself to his complete absence of victory, nor is he especially gracious in the face of same. He pitches a hissy fit like a whiny six-year-old when the ice cream runs out as he’s forced to log out – thus forfeiting the battle. The trumpet sounds, and before I’m transported back to the locker room, I fire a shot from both my hacks into the crowd.
~*~
Back in the locker room.
It only takes a moment for Sophia to start in. “You really need to stop riling up the crowd! They can riot, you know.”
“Really?” I ask. “Is that true, Rocket?”
Rocket: Let me check …
Chrono guffaws. “That would be crazy!” He places one hand on my shoulder, bears down on me. “If they do that, Aiden and I will rush out of here and help you kick all of their asses.”
Aiden nods. “Certain death to participate in Quantum’s beserker-fest?Count me in.”
Rocket: It’s true! If it happens, I’ll log in and do some Ninjitsu!
“Everyone put their nuts back in their sacks,” Sophia says.
“Hey!” I grin. “That was sexist and offensive!”
“Ha! From the guy that calls women broads and dollfaces.”
“It’s a term of endearment!”
“Well, you haven’t called me any of these things, so I guess you don’t find me endearing.” She gives me a half-hearted shrug. “I’m just messing with you my neo-misogynist, fearless leader. Go ahead, boys, try to bust out of that door. There is no telling which stadium you’ll end up in. Remember, all these matches are happening simultaneously in about sixteen to twenty identical stadiums.”
“It would be nice to do some real-time fighting,” says Aiden as he sits down.
“You’ll be able to do plenty more if Quantum wins and we make it to Ultima Thule,” Sophia says.
His eyes light up. “The battles are real-time on the next continent? Why didn’t anyone tell me this?”
“You’re an NPC, you should already know this. Haven’t you gone over world basics?”
Chrono laughs. “An NPC who doesn’t know world basics!”
“Remember, I’m not from here.” Aiden points his thumb at me. “Besides, we’re the type that like to play it by ear.”
“Damn right we are.”
“Well to inform both of you,” she says, “Ultima Thule mixes the battle structure up to keep things interesting. The battle style is decided at random at the start of the fight.”
“Any way we can tip that randomness to the side of real-time?” he asks.
She shrugs. “Not unless you are a Proxima Developer.”
I stretch my hands over my head. “Okie, dokie. One more fight left. Anybody have any pompoms?”
Aiden says, “I seem to recall you having a pair of Lollipop Chainsaw pompoms with a retractable blade in the grips. You got me real good with that one time. Still, it’d be better if you had the Lollipop Chainsaw costume as well.”
“You got a secret you want to uncloset with us, bub?”
“Costumes are your thing,” he says. “If I remember correctly.”
He’s right about item 172, my pair of pompoms with retractable blades in the grip. They have always been a great surprise attack weapon for me. He may be right about the costume too – I once surprised some of Scarface Charlie’s goons once by showing up at one of their birthday parties dressed as Pogo the Clown with the pompoms in my hands. A circus-themed gutting ensued.
My brief memory session sends a pang to my in-game heart – every time I think about The Loop I wind up remembering Dolly, her dark hair, her curves like a sinuous and winding mountain highway, her diamond necklace bright enough to guide the Three Kings. What I wouldn’t give …
Damn. Dragons, giants and everything in between is exciting, but I’d trade it all for just one more chance to wake up in my hotel room and off Morning Assassin; hit the hallway and then murdalize the six Lobby Boys; shoot Jim the Doorman between the eyes; mosey on into the dining area to find Dolly with some pancakes and coffee; kill a few hours by killing for a few hours; return to my room to find Dolly waiting for me and The Maltese Falcon playing on the boob tube.
If I could turn back time.
~*~
Rocket: Last fight, Q Daddy, make it count!
Me: Yeah, yeah, I got it.
Sophia: Remember, don’t antagonize the crowd!
Me: Yeah – I’ll make that my number one priority.
I look away from the messages to the crowd. They’re screaming at the tops of their lungs; the two places I’ve blasted in the grandstands are still smoldering. Some of the more enthusiastic crowd members are already throwing shit onto the field. I dodge a half-eaten bratwurst the size of a Brahman bull thrown from the giants’ side of the stadium, and I suppress the urge to equip item 100, my Doom BFG 9000 or item 459, my Reason Railgun, and really give them something to hiss and boo about.
The gates open on the opposite side of the arena, and the ginormousest giant I’ve ever seen steps out.
Talk about Attack on Titan.
The giant grins wickedly, puts hands on hips and booms, “Fee-Fi-Fo et cetera. This won’t take long!”
The crowd roars its approval.
He’s clad in leather straps and bands, with a short leather kilt. From my vantage point, I get an excellent view of his leopard-pattern jock strap, complete with DisNike Tinkerbell Swoosh. It’s really hard to decide what’s worse – the corporate sponsor emblazoned wedding tackle protector, or the authentic 1980s Brock Samson Mississippi Mudflap that extends halfway down his back.
A pair of bedazzled and glittering scimitars appear in his hands.
“Don’t let me down, Ray,” I say as I equip item 569, the golden gear that Steampunk gave us after Zedic and I stomped the Wellsian Tripods into the ground.
