Gianna studies our surroundings from atop my back. She has a small gun in one hand and is cautiously peering at the most surprising aspect of the environment we’re in. Other wanderers look at her, their faces revealing to some degree the surprise and confusion her presence makes them feel.
No less than five people are looking at us, and all of them are armed. We’re in the middle of a room on the smaller side, and this is one of the few rooms we’ve come across with a ladder leading up to the catwalk. I let my face be a neutral mask as I peer at the five armed, and wounded, wanderers.
“Cosplay? Here?” One of them, a girl who can’t be older than her mid-teens, asks. She is holding a spear with a stone tip, and I spot the faint blood on it. I begin to move to head past them, but one of them steps forward and gestures for me to stop. I glance at him with a nonchalant look and continue moving, before he raises a roughly made stone hammer and this time I give him an annoyed look.
“My friend and I have places to go and you have wounded people to tend to.” I remark, flatly, as I switch some of my perks on and ready myself for what might be an inevitable conflict. Well… inevitable might be a bit strong.
A part of me is curious as to what would happen if I took on and defeated a human. My last conflict with a person was before I arrived here. Fighting someone rather than something with my current, potent, power set has not happened yet so I don’t fully wield my social perks. Sooner or later I’ll have to use my powers on a person, so I might as well see what will happen if I just use them now.
“We outnumber you and I think we’d benefit from that toy of yours more than you do.” The apparent leader of the group counters, a predatory smile on his face as he nods at the small gun in Gianna’s hand. She growls at him and points the gun at him, which causes the teen to take a step back and put her spear in front of her.
“Enough. Just let us walk past. There’s no reason for anyone, anyone at all, to get hurt here.” I remark, harshly. My tone of voice causes the girl to look away from Gianna and look at me. My clone moves through the ground beneath Gianna and I and sneaks past the group but doesn’t emerge.
I could easily handle these wanderers if I were by myself but with Gianna, this moment is more complicated. I can still win, even non-lethally, but I don’t know how non-lethal I want to be.
The others in the group have not made any aggressive motions, but they are not contradicting their apparent leader or at least mouthpiece. I don’t know how to handle them, so I order my clone to scan them and their minds. I sense engrams of them, mental dossiers on whatever I “Analyze” that fill a back corner of my mind whenever I use this ability on people, appear in my head even as my clone silently uses my stranger abilities on the wanderers. I smile and ask Gianna to get off my back for a moment.
“Are you sure…?” She asks, looking at me and I nod slightly. She does as I ask, and when she’s off my back she takes a few steps back, peering out at the people in front of us. The gun remains in her hands, and over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been slowly teaching her how to use it so while she’s not the most reliable shot in the world she’s competent enough and I can course correct her attacks with my telekinesis anyway.
My clone’s actions allow me to learn that the other humans with the belligerent man are not fond of him but they fear the consequences of disunity if he succeeds. They are all just cowardly, due in part to having seen the man in action before and knowing that he is a threat in a fight.
As I look at him I subtly feel the effects of “Priority Target” activate. PT is a perk that lets me understand the relationships between others, and it gives me the instincts needed to know how to safely navigate and dismantle a complex web of interpersonal relationships. I’ve used it before, in Stoneboro, but never offensively like this. I get the sense that if I soundly defeat this guy I can easily cow the others into putting down their arms.
The man is a tall figure, with the build of a quarterback. He is wearing multiple layers of clothes, definitely for the sake of defending himself against simple entity attacks. That tactic might work against hounds, maybe even make partygoers have to work a bit harder for their kills, but it wouldn’t work against me. He wields a handmade stone weapon, specifically a maul.
I fully turn on various auras I possess that I normally leave off, abilities which have not been helpful in the time since I entered the backrooms since until now my enemies have not been human and/or social. These powers have ominous names like “You’re All Going To Die” and “Harm Aura”, and they allow me to debuff my enemies just by being close to them.
I focus on the man and hit him with a particularly nasty effect by targeting his ego. I don’t say a thing and instead I lock eyes with him as I activate a power named “Impatience”. This power takes hold of the man immediately, and he snarls at me as he opts to lunge at me.
“Impatience” is a perk that messes people up by filling them with levels of recklessness and suicidal courage. Normally the perk affects multiple people at once and is diluted by that, but I am focusing it on the lone belligerent who feels like trying to mess me up which causes it to be dramatically focused and far more powerful. Time slows, thanks to more of my perks, as he lunges at me and when Gianna moves to raise her weapon and fire it I gesture for her to relax. She hesitates but doesn’t take any shots, and I grin as I watch the bully charging at me move in slow motion towards me.
I dart towards him, making full use of my superior agility to effortlessly close the distance between the man and myself. He doesn’t get a chance to even widen his eyes before I lash out. I extend my arms and use my bicep to knock the asshole’s handmade hammer out of his hands, even as I continue moving and proceed to fully tackle him. The moment that I make contact with the man’s bulky frame I activate my charging ability and send the man sailing through the room. He lands ungracefully on his back and blood begins to seep out of his eyes. The blood is because of my aura, which passively damages my enemies internally, though at the speed that I am moving, I doubt he’ll even really feel the damage caused by my blows.
The sheer speed of this set of movements is blinding and I’m not done yet. I charge towards him and pounce on him when I reach where his fallen form lies. I will electrical energy to fill my fist as I punch the man’s chest. Electricity enters him and I feel him begin to seize and spasm as my power rocks his body. I retract my fist and get up before I stop purposefully speeding up my perception of time.
“Dumbass.” I remark as man’s allies turn in confusion. The man is out cold but alive, and when the people accompanying him see him I hear several shocked gasps. I glance at the man’s followers, and study them more.
There are two men and two women. One of the women is a dark-haired girl who has the energy and appearance of a high schooler, though she’s probably an upperclassman, and the other girl is a tanner girl with lighter hair who has the same apparent age as me. Both of them are armed, the dark-haired girl with the spear, and the lighter-haired girl with a handmade knife. The two guys with them are both on the shorter side with the same color of hair and are actually related, being two brothers according to the engrams I have of them and they are between the ages of the two women, maybe about the same age as college freshmen.
The others are paralyzed with fear, but I make no moves to approach them. I haven’t used any powers, other than my electric fist, and I’d rather not use my powers on these cowards. I glance at Gianna and nod for her to come over to me.
“Does anyone here think they can fare better against me than… your boss?” I ask, as Gianna joins me. The others pause, examine me, glance at the jock, and then shake their heads. I nod at them.
“Good. Now can you retrieve your man and go away?” I state, glaring at the lot of the wanderers. I take a few steps away, Gianna follows after me, and we watch as the conscious men step forward and retrieve their comrade. When they return, dragging the unconscious asshole who wanted a fight, I look at them and decide to ask them a question.
“Why were you up on the catwalk?” I ask. The one to answer is one of the women.
“We are adventurers. We were following up on rumors about a mythical vault located in the middle of the level. According to some old wives tales it’s filled with treasure.” The girl remarks. I glance at her curiously.
“The… ‘middle’ of the level? How would you get there?” I ask, legitimately curiously. She points straight upward and I sigh, nodding as a lot of different things suddenly make sense all at once. For a second I’m silent before I mentally test something: I reach inward and mentally make following up on the rumors that these dummies heard a goal of mine. The instant that I do a part of the glowing trail I’ve been following branches off and snakes upward to the catwalk. This is annoying but not surprising.
I mentally order one of my clones to follow this particular line of inquiry curious to see where this’ll lead. My clone does this without hesitation, and I mentally thank the figure before turning my attention back to the scene in front of me. I watch as the figures quietly thank me for not killing their companion, and then run off in the direction Gianna and I came in.
When they are gone I turn to my companion and I ask her if she wants to continue walking. She nods brightly at me and we continue our journey.
The thing about the backrooms that I have found that the media I was familiar with didn’t prepare me for was the long stretches of boredom. I know people tried to convey the vastness of this place, but nothing short of actually being here can properly prepare someone for the incomprehensible vastness of this place. Gianna and I wander for hours before we call it quits. When we do I lead us to my outpost and we begin to rest.
At this point I trust Gianna enough that I don’t bother using my perk to make an object immobile on her door. I do utilize a handful of my abilities to summon generic gangsters and station them on the outside of the outpost, but that is mostly to keep out any entities, or to give me advance notice that some are lurking around. Meanwhile my clone in Stoneboro is tending to patients in the community and endearing himself to them.
As I get in bed and prepare for the night ahead I will my clone to continue traveling. He’s been following the quest trail for several hours now, and has passed by hundreds of entities that are patrolling the catwalk high in the skies above the level. Clever usage of perks allows my clone to avoid notice while still studying the monsters and by the time I, my true self, am awake my clone has a full report for me noting that it has flown over a few settlements and that it has seen several monsters from more deathmoths to goddamn partygoers.
In minutes Gianna and I are back out in the open and while we get moving my clone in Stoneboro wakes up and gets ready to start the day. One subtle thing that has changed since last night is that there is a pink aura around Gianna’s head that I instinctively, supernaturally know is a manifestation of the “Dating Minigame” perk. This curious thing lets me know the sort of relationships people are willing to have with me, and I intuitively know that a part of Gianna’s heart is open to us changing our relationship from just being friends and travel partners to being something… else. Something “more”. I think about the possibility of us being something more while we get going.
This marks another moderately uninterrupted period of travel wherein Gianna and I get to go and get our cardio in every single day while one of my clones follows up on the rumors of treasure. My clone in Stoneboro is busy living a decently domestic life and is getting plenty of chances to hone the powers of “Living Legend”, “Professional Expertise”, and even “Prior Training”; a perk that gives me a decent threshold of experience with powers and skills I will be gaining throughout my chain.
During this time I quickly realize that if I were on a normal chain and this was a period-based jump Stoneboro and the UNCB would be perfect for me… I could easily stay on this level and spend my days here as a doctor, helping people and making use of my perk-granted experiences to subtly guide a community. My chain, however, is not normal and I will not leave this place unless I reach level 12, The Ruined City, which is something that is further complicated by the bizarre breaks in reality occurring that allow entities from other continuities to slip into this particular multiverse.
Gianna and I continue our ceaseless wandering, making our way towards some hatch or something that should allow us to slip into the level known as The Sub-Basement. For the next few days Gianna and I steadily make progress, gradually wandering through mostly peaceful hallways and large rooms, only occasionally encountering traces of monsters or having to avoid corpses tossed down to the ground level from the catwalk. All the while my clone ethereally darts above the catwalk, covering dozens of miles a day thanks to our significant abilities related to motion, travel, and flight.
About a full week passes before anything of note happens, as our days tend to be fairly monotonous and one note, but when actual events occur they are significant. And this is no exception: my traveling partner and I find ourselves at one end of the largest single chamber I’ve ever seen. What’s more is that in the distance we see the second settlement I’ve encountered so far in The Backrooms, an utterly gigantic city with full buildings made from stone that stretch hundreds of feet into the air but still don’t quite reach the catwalks that dot the skies and provide much of the illumination that makes vision possible for normal people. I see distant figures armed with fully modern weapons and as Gianna and I approach the city I opt to let her take the lead here.
When we reach the edge of the city we find ourselves getting in a long line of disheveled-looking wanderers who have certainly lacked Gianna and I’s luck or my perks and items. Gianna looks at me surprised when we get into the line, and openly questions my judgment.
“You know that if this is a UNCB city we could potentially find a way to communicate with your mom right? Or at least find other travelers heading deeper into The Backrooms and thus travel a touch more safely.” I remark, surprising her and making her smile. She beams at me, apparently having not considered the possibility of inter-level communication (which is admittedly an unlikely prospect), or at least the more real possibility of safety in numbers and us making friends we can use and be used by as a means to get into the deeper reaches of the level.
There are levels much safer than here, so there’s gonna be plenty of people who want to brave some of the dangers of the next handful of levels to get to a spate of safe places. If we can find some of them we can gather a small party and venture as a group towards the areas that are a bit more dangerous than here like The Sub-Basement and The Electrical Station.
I nudge Gianna to take a slight leadership role as we approach the city’s entrance, and she willingly takes the lead, knowing that I support and trust her. When we reach the entrance, the gate that separates the city from the rest of the gigantic chamber, Gianna approaches a guard who is tasked with the unpleasant duty of interacting with visitors and deciding who should be allowed entry and who shouldn’t. I curiously follow close behind her, eager to see what she does and to determine if any of my perks will need to be used…
The Game of Life is in play right now, having suffused Gianna over the months we’ve been traveling together. It should be strong enough, at least coupled with Gianna’s status as a citizen of the UNCB, that we can at least enter the city… I am a touch concerned regarding Gianna’s unique heritage as some sort of hybrid, but if worse comes to worse I’ll intervene and protect her. She happily darts towards the guard and cheerfully introduces herself, causing me to laugh as I walk towards the two.
