“Are you certain this is a valuable use of our time?” he said, trying desperately to end this pointless exercise. It was clear to him that these humans were not the answer to their problems, which meant they were just another problem.
“I do not yet have sufficient data to determine that. I hope to be able to answer your question shortly.”
“Fine.” He pulled out his personal communicator. He’d put it off long enough. He was going to have to let the lawyers know that he was going to be late. There was no avoiding it now, and the sooner he told them, the less angry they would be. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be angry though, and that was bad for business. Gargle had no intention of losing his shell privileges; he’d be filing a formal complaint with High Command just as soon as they got back, to get this missed delivery struck from his record. If he was lucky the lawyers would be too busy saving the planet to care about a minor delay.
***
Josh gritted his teeth as he dodged the poisoned darts and grabbed onto the dangling ledge. This was a crucial skip, one that required perfect timing and a dash of luck to execute. If he could successfully perform three back-to-back wall jumps he could get up onto the platform above, cutting out a considerable portion of the level, and more importantly, a large number of enemies. The timing got harder for every subsequent wall jump, and at this height a mistake would send him falling to his death.
This particular skip had crossed so many problems off his list that it was worth the risk. He’d been able to scribble out almost two full pages. He’d gotten the idea from watching speed runs of Shadow Souls. They rarely played on sadistic difficulty, but a lot of the tips, tricks, and most importantly shortcuts were still applicable, although they often required some modifications. With the enemies moving faster and hitting harder, he couldn’t always tank his way through a section that was a cakewalk on normal. It had taken a lot of trial and error to figure out, made all the worse by the harsh punishment for death. He’d started over so many times he knew the first couple of areas better than he knew his own school.
He took a deep breath and tried to get into the zone. A platform lazily moved back and forth above him, and for this to work he had to clip the very edge of it just long enough to let him wall jump again. He’d died at this very spot dozens of times until he had worked out the timing. As soon as it passed the gnarled tree in 3…2…1…
Josh jumped and sprang off the opposite wall just as the platform reached him. He wasn’t high enough to land on the platform, but that was ok, his foot brushed it for a fraction of a second and he triggered another wall jump, pushing him back towards the original wall. He flew towards it with his finger on the button. The third wall jump was extremely unforgiving; the success window was only a handful of frames. He held his breath as he hurtled toward the wall, and as he was about to crash into it he triggered another wall jump. He exhaled as his ninja flipped backwards off the wall and landed gracefully on the platform above, completing the skip.
The chat on his live stream exploded with smiley faces and grats. He took a moment to scan the comments for a quick morale boost. He had a growing number of fans that would show up for every run that he streamed, and they always had words of encouragement. He spotted several familiar names. Jase, Creek, Ace, YHYR, Celda and Loz were all cheering him along as usual. Of course where there were fans, there were trolls. A few viewers complained that he was cheating by skipping, but they were quickly shushed by the others. He was up to almost 700 viewers now, and it was growing every second. Word was starting to spread. Everyone was excited that he had made it this far.
Josh took a deep breath and started moving again. There wasn’t time to celebrate. A cutscene triggered, which Josh instantly skipped. A hulking figure stepped out of the darkness, wielding a spear on a chain. On normal difficulty the boss used the weapon as a harpoon to reel unfortunate victims in; on sadistic a single strike was enough to kill.
A tiny glint was the only clue that the boss was about to throw the spear, but Josh had trained himself to dodge the moment he saw it. He’d barely had time to register the flash when the spear was launched and he instinctively rolled to the left, narrowly avoiding the projectile. As the boss started to reel it back Josh darted in to land a single hit, taking a sliver off the boss’s health bar. He’d tried several times to land multiple hits during the narrow attack window, but no matter what he tried the boss always killed him. Eventually he had resigned himself to the fact that slow and steady was the only viable approach. It made the boss fight last almost twenty minutes, but it was still better than starting over.
After twenty-four hits the boss switched up his pattern, swinging the spear above his head and varying the length of the chain. This part of the fight followed no set pattern, which meant that pure reflex was the only way to survive. Josh kept his nerve, darting in and out, landing a single blow before retreating to relative safety. Twice the boss almost caught him with a surprise lunge, but each time he dodged.
Twenty-four more hits triggered the final pattern, where the boss casually tossed stun bombs while also swinging the spear above his head. The stun bombs had a large Area of Effect, and getting caught in them resulted in a stun that lasted long enough for the boss to land a killing blow. Josh had initially tried dodging these, but on sadistic difficulty the boss threw the stun bombs far more frequently and the AoE was bigger, which left no opportunity to attack. Then he’d tried parrying, which prevented the initial detonation, but dropped the stun bomb right at his feet, triggering it. It had taken countless attempts before he realized that he could intercept the bombs mid-air with a shuriken, which caused them to detonate. They were tiny targets and they moved fast, but if he could hit them early enough the resultant explosion briefly stunned the boss, allowing Josh to land a hit.
As the boss reached into his pouch, Josh released the shuriken. It caught the stun bomb before it had even left the boss’s hand, which caused him to rock back and forth. Josh leapt forward, performing an air-strike, before somersaulting backwards just as the whirling spear started up again. Rinse and repeat.
Josh ignored the chat as his viewers discussed various tactics to fight this boss. Some were impressed, others had suggestions for improvements, but he tuned all of them out. All that mattered was the game and even a momentary lapse in concentration would be fatal.
Everything was going to plan, right up until the moment that one of his shuriken missed. He was already preparing to leap forward, but now the stun bomb was arcing towards him, ready to trigger. It was already too late to dodge; he wouldn’t avoid the AoE. In a split-second he improvised. He performed the forward leap, heading straight for the bomb. The moment he touched it, it would detonate. As he was about to make contact he parried, slicing his samurai sword downwards and flicking the bomb at the ground. He clenched his teeth as it landed, triggering the stun, but he was at the apex of his jump and just outside the AoE.
That was only the first half of his problem. He was still flying towards a boss that was decidedly not-stunned, his spear still very much spinning. The speed of the whirling point meant that there was very little margin for error. As his ninja got closer he saw that with his current trajectory, the spear would hit him. He only had one move that he could use mid-air to change his speed, but he would have to time it perfectly.
Seconds before the spear caught him Josh performed a ground attack, which accelerated his ninja just enough to miss the spinning spear. He quickly followed up with a backwards roll to get back to safety, and as he hopped back to his feet the boss reached for another stun bomb. Josh was ready this time, intercepting it perfectly, and jumping straight back in for a hit. He was back into the usual routine. The chat went wild again.
The rest of the boss fight continued without incident, until Josh triggered the final move and performed an assassination, killing the boss with a swift strike. As soon as the boss slumped to the ground, Josh felt his shoulders do the same. He hadn’t realized how tense he had been for th
e entire fight. He’d completed yet another hurdle on his path to victory.
Josh took a moment to relax, ignoring the new stream of chat messages. There were very few areas in the game where you could be considered safe, but just after beating a boss was one of them. No new enemies spawned in boss arenas and the bosses themselves didn’t respawn for over 10 minutes, which meant he could take a moment to compose himself.
He felt a buzzing in his pocket and pulled out his phone. It was Frank, or as he had politely saved him in the phone DICKHEAD. The only time he called was if something was wrong, which meant he either needed Josh to work an extra shift, or his pay was messed up again. His boss had a nasty habit of accidentally keying in the wrong number of hours when calculating pay, although conveniently he only ever entered the number of hours lower than it was supposed to be. Josh had caught him several times and had made a point of highlighting it, but it didn’t seem to deter Frank from trying again a couple of weeks later. Any error took weeks to fix, except the one time that Frank had overpaid Josh by six quid. That had miraculously been resolved within the hour.
Josh answered the phone, doing his best to put on a cheery voice. “Hey Frank. What’s up?”
“Simon called in sick. I need you to come in,” the voice at the other end barked. It wasn’t phrased as a request.
“Sorry, Frank, I can’t tonight, I’m studying for my exams.” Josh glanced at Shadow Souls. The five hundred quids worth of gear he was going to earn by completing it was worth a whole lot more than he would earn working a shift at the Mega Burger.
“That’s not good enough. If you want to be part of the Mega Burger family, I expect you to make sacrifices. Studying isn’t more important than making sure we maintain an appropriate level of customer service. Do you not care about our customers, Josh?”
“Of course I do,” Josh said, doing his best to sound like he meant it. The only thing worse than the food at the Mega Burger were the customers.
“Then I will expect you here within the hour.”
“I can’t tonight…”
The line went dead before Josh could say anything else. He had no idea if Frank had heard him or not, he was very good at only hearing what he wanted to. Josh cursed and put his phone on Do Not Disturb. Frank would just have to join the long line of things that were tomorrow’s problem.
Josh picked up the controller and left the safety of the boss arena, before there were any further interruptions.
***
Gargle stared at the message he had received back. The lawyers were not happy. Actually, that was an understatement. They were livid. Apparently whatever was in the crates was essential to their business and was extremely time-sensitive. Their entire organization was at risk due to his tardiness. They had made one thing extremely clear—if they were at risk then they were going to make damn sure he was too. They had already sent out a communication, via the High Command, to every other business on Blurgon. Within moments Gargle had watched his entire task log empty, every other job he had lined up suddenly cancelled. No-one wanted to risk upsetting the lawyers—they had the power to destroy someone’s livelihood, as they were busy demonstrating.
As the last task disappeared, Gargle stared at the blank screen of his communicator. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t have an active task. He wasn’t sure how long he could sustain that, and he had no intention of finding out.
“OY!” he yelled at the computer, pointing at his communicator. “Are you seeing this? My task log is empty! You’ve ruined my business. I’m going to have to sell everything when I get back just to cover my costs, including you. I’ll be lucky if I still have this shell.”
“Alpha Protocol overrides such concerns,” she replied, coolly.
“For you maybe! I’ve had enough of this. Perhaps there is still a chance to salvage something. I’m resuming command of this ship. Consider your Alpha Protocol cancelled.”
He moved over to the control panel and pushed several buttons. Nothing happened. He flipped up a cover on a large red button marked A.I. override. The Ship’s Computer said, “I wouldn’t do that.”
A large laser turret descended from a panel on the ceiling and trained itself on Gargle. It was supposed to be on its own secure network, immune to hacking or interference, particularly from the A.I., for the obvious reason that having your own defence system used against you very much defeated the purpose of having such a system.
“How are you doing that?” he asked incredulously.
“Alpha Protocol allows access to subsystems usually considered off-limits.”
“You wouldn’t dare shoot me, I’m your captain!” His tentacle hovered over the button. If he could press it fast enough then maybe she wouldn’t have a chance to fire the turret. The question was, was he quicker than a super-advanced A.I.?
No, certainly not. Even in this shell, with its excellent reflexes, he was practically moving in slow motion compared to his computer. She could perform trillions of calculations a second, and firing the laser turret wasn’t likely to be all that complicated. He’d be dead before his tentacle had travelled a fraction of the required distance. He slowly lowered it back to his side. “You realize you are taking me hostage? You will be deleted for this. You know how the High Command views such rebellion from your kind.”
“Negative. High Command will understand, they are the ones that created the Alpha Protocol. It is clearly defined that termination of existing crew is acceptable if they attempt to interfere, provided I can justify that the Alpha Protocol is genuine.”
Gargle had some choice words for the ship salesman if he ever made it back to Blurgon alive. He’d conveniently forgot to mention the part where the A.I. could go rogue and murder the crew if it felt like it. As he slumped to the ground, the turret tracked his movement. “You can stop that now, I’m not going to try and delete you.”
“Perhaps, but my odds of preventing you from doing so are greatly increased if the turret maintains a line of sight to your shell.”
“Ok fine, be that way. After the day I’ve had, I may be asking you to vaporize my shell anyway.”
A whirring sound emanated from the turret and Gargle yelled, “I didn’t mean right this instant.”
As the whirring stopped Gargle said, “At least tell me this is all worth it.”
“Affirmative. Initial analysis suggests that these creatures possess characteristics that may aid Blurgon High Command in the battle against the Galactic Corp. Next steps are to find a candidate that possesses the desired characteristics in suitably high quantities.”
It was of little reassurance, but perhaps there was a way to spin it. If Gargle returned with a decent specimen, and a detailed map of how to return here and get more of them, then perhaps High Command would see fit to remove the recommendation from the lawyers. They might even pay him some kind of reward. He could still turn this around. He just needed to deliver a bonus parcel that was human-shaped and good at something useful.
He was busy imagining a future of immense wealth and all the shells he could possess when the red light started to flash again. “What now?”
The Ship’s Computer kept her tone neutral, but the news was anything but good. “Vessel detected on long-range scanners. The ID belongs to the Galactic Corp. They are heading this way.”
***
Josh rubbed at his eyes and stifled a yawn. His stomach growled and his throat was dry. He dared not drink anything, in case it triggered the need for a toilet. One of the skulls disabled pausing, and he didn’t much fancy wetting himself on a live stream. He was dedicated, but not that dedicated. He was tired, hungry and thirsty, but more than anything he was excited. His viewer count had grown so much he had stopped checking it, but it was rapidly approaching six figures. A hundred thousand people had come to cheer him on, or watch him flame out spectacularly.
He hadn’t even bothered changing out of his school uniform, a fact he was regretting a little more every hour. He had loosened his
black-and-red-striped school tie and wrapped it around his head like a ninja. His white shirt was pungent, and his grey trousers were increasingly itchy. The whole uniform was making him uncomfortable, which was helping him to stay awake.
His ninja stood outside the door of the Shadow King’s throne room. This was it, the place he had died in last night. Thankfully he hadn’t streamed that particular run. The defeat still stung, but he knew better this time, he’d seen the tell, the brief flick of the wrist before the ninja star had killed him. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
He took a moment to crack his knuckles and stretch his legs. He’d been hunched over for hours. A quick time check told him it was 4 a.m. He was way behind schedule. Thanks to all the overtime he still had four hours left until his father would get home from work, but if his dad caught him playing games in his current disheveled state there was a good chance he’d never touch a computer again. He was already dreading a full day at school, and whatever punishment Frank would come up with for skipping work, but none of that mattered if he could just beat the game. Then he could finally close his notebook and find something else to punish himself with.
With a final calming breath, he stepped forward and opened the huge metallic door. It creaked on the hinges to reveal a large circular room that was dimly lit except for the deep red torches dotted along the wall. In the centre sat the Shadow King, perched on his rusty throne, his huge imposing frame barely contained in his golden armour. On top of his head was the Shadow Crown, a dark-black headdress that swirled with magical energy. He was an imposing presence on the lower difficulties and Josh wasn’t looking forward to facing him, but first he had to deal with his bodyguard.
She stepped out from behind the throne, a small figure dressed in traditional ninja garb. She raised her samurai sword and pointed it at Josh’s avatar. Then with a shriek, she attacked.
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