Day 1 - Morning - New Amster City

*crunch* *crunch* *chang* *beep*

Two sentry turrets pop into existence after leaving my pocket space. One on either side of me. The distraction helps. Not much, but it helps.

Somebody's gonna pay for this. Gonna fucking pay big. Hmm… how hard is it to kill a "system?"

"Hello." "Hi." "Searching."

Yep, I copied the Portal turrets. Well, not exactly. Acyri's science was steampunk magitech. And in my rush I didn't have time to advance to dieselpunk or atompunk. So they look old timey with orange copper, black iron and some exposed gears. Plus four thicker legs instead of three and two little stowable manipulator arms behind the pop out machine guns.

But they still got the thin egg shape and single eye. Have that little laser pointer sight too.

Was a downright pain to get the voices right. Soft tonal robotic with a smidge of depressed delusional psychopath. 

• [ Sentry Mk I deployed. Sentry Mk I deployed. ]

Oh. Those notifications look different. The interface has changed. Must be part of that "integration" stuff.

*zzzzz*

Dozens of mosquito sized machines appear above me. Each with multiple little buzzing wings.

• [ Scout Mk I wing deployed. ]

Ha! Sweet! They're working! Fly sized ornithopters. Perfect for scouting. Hmm… Let's see if the feeds still work.

Dozens of screens appear in my mindscape. Showing me a 360 degree view of where I am. And what's left of me.

Jesus Christ! That fucking asshole! How the hell is this a suitable vessel?! Knew that phone support bastard was going to screw me. Bet he's from space india. Yeah, right, sure your name is Bob.

Fuck. No wonder I can't see. Half my face is gone! God damn that's gruesome.

My new body looks, well, eaten. Both the right arm and left leg are completely gone. Plus, what isn't missing? Is burned. Almost like this body was…

"Electrocuted." I croak through broken teeth and torn cheeks.

Memories begin seeping in. Betrayal. Tragedy. Hatred. One last strike. And one final prayer.

Revenge.

Damn, this boy really fried everything here. Including himself. Well, you killed these monsters. But the real monsters are still breathing. Though I can take care of that.

*grin*

This ex-corpse is lying on the ground in a room. A basement. Cinder block walls and poured concrete floor. Little windows up by the ceiling show it's daylight outside. A large room filled with racks, shelves, tools, and parts.

It's cool, musty and scorched.

Yuck. August in New Amster. Going to get hot and humid. Hey, only a few weeks till mom's birthday. Crap. Hope I can find ingredients for a cake. Will have to cook it too. Since the only thing sis could ever cook was meth… shit.

An overlap. At least that's what I call them. Same thing happened with Jesper in steam land. But not in medieval or cyber world. Even after their soul "departs." As long as their memories exist? A piece of them does too.

And when I least expect it. I'm not "me" anymore. I'm them. Or "us." Hard to explain but it's not bad, per se. I'll want tea instead of soda. Beer instead of whiskey. Won't drop the f-bomb every other word.

Even reminisce about a certain someone's first crush. Who turned out to be the skankiest skank in steam world and a walking STD factory.

Then I realize it and I'm just me again. Though, unfortunately, it seems this kid is even more fucked up than Jesper.

Now where is here? Ah.

This was the old apartment complex's, Carlton Heights, main maintenance bay. Old boilers, furnaces and storage fill the rooms next to it. Kid spent a lot of time here during vacations, when he wasn't working, learning about machines from the part-time mostly retired building technician. 

Now it's filled with junk and corpses. Human and, yep, goblin. My thopters spread out. Flying down hallways, into rooms, and through pipes and ducts. These goblins have been here for weeks and trashed the place. Debris and feces everywhere.

Pretty open too since anything flammable, like doors, has been used as fuel for cooking fires. In one room my thopters discover the bodies of several women and more goblins. Died in the midst of baby making.

In another are the goblin babies. Well, were. Not surprising. Since gobs have infamously short pregnancies. No matter what race the unfortunate mother is.

Ha!

There's even a server room. Filled with old, and now broken, computers. Another of the city's "modernization" programs that were always underfunded, half-assed, corrupt, and canceled by the next mayor. 

Snuck in here years ago and what was every drive full of? Yep, you guessed it. Porn. Terabytes upon terabytes of porn. Some real nasty stuff too. Gave me nightmares for weeks. Was going to call the police but sis said not… shit.

That is, Louis's sister told him not to bother. The cops were probably in on it. Considering all the handcuffs I, he, saw in the videos. He believed her. Personally? With hindsight I think it's more likely his sister was actually one of the "performers."

Or was it just a coincidence that the room suddenly had a new padlock after that? Yeah, right. Well that lock, and the door itself, aren't there anymore.

Everywhere in this long basement are dead gobs, dead rats, even dead bugs. It's cross shaped, like the twenty story building above it. A big X when seen from above. Kid's last spit in the world's face killed a good couple hundred goblins. And a few suffering humans that I bet were wishing they were dead.

Sadly, there are two other humans in this room. Women. Can't tell through the charred burns now but remember both were hotties. One was grade A milf. This boy's mother, in fact. The other was a college babe. Also very pretty. His older sister.

Memories bubble up.

They're here so the kid would come here. A trap. This boy, Louis McConnell, didn't have a dad. His father was out of the picture before he was born. And his mother's terrible taste in men kept any of the replacements from lasting long. Or being worth a shit.

But Lou pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and beat the odds. Stayed out of the gangs and off the drugs. Quite the achievement in the "projects." That's city owned low-income housing. High-rise slums.

He focused on part-time jobs and school work. Plus being tougher and smarter than anyone who got in his way. Helped his mother pull her life together and get his sister into college. Lastly helping himself get a free ride scholarship into one of the most prestigious private high schools in the country.

Fort Matthews Preparatory Academy.

*crunch* *crunch* *ping*

"Hello." “Ouch.” "I don't blame you."

• [ Goat Mk I deployed. ]

The turrets sound off as a goat bot knocks over one of the sentry bots as it comes out of my personal storage dimension. Unfolding a manipulator arm, the sentry rights itself quickly enough.

The four legged and four armed goat ignores my turret bots and gets straight to work. Eating. Everything.

Unable to overcome the range limitations of my nanos. And afraid I would wake up in a bad situation again. Decided I might need protection and resources as soon as I got wherever I was going.

Solution? Turrets and goats. The turrets, with their four 40 cal machine guns each, defend me. While the goats, with their straight out of a nightmare oversized maws from hell, eat everything that looks useful and bring it back for my nanos to consume.

• [ Goat Mk I deployed. ]

There, that ought to be enough to keep me safe. Plus collect enough material and fuel to fix myself.

Now where was I, oh, yeah. Fort Matthews Preparatory Academy, the FMPA. Where it all went wrong. And, of course a woman is to blame. Well, not really, it was the kid's own fault for falling in love.

Cynthia Houghton. Damn what a nice piece of ass. Even as a freshman she had a whole lot of TnA. And it just got better with time. Unfortunately, "Cynth" was a bit too sheltered, too naive and too nice. Leaving her vulnerable to an asshole.

Johnathon "Johnny" Grant.

They'd known each other forever. But the princess from old money never had any interest in the vertically challenged overweight prince from new money.

A tall handsome kid from the projects though? With both brains and brawn? Cynth was practically writing the script for the movie adaption of their fairy tale rags to riches knight in shining armor romance the moment she laid eyes on him.

It's funny, in a tragic way, that FMPA was just one of the offers Louis had. But it was the closest boarding school to his mother and sister so it's the one he chose.

Within a week, Cynth had won him over and we, they, were officially dating. Her parents, though, had a meltdown. Their princess with a black irish mutt from the projects?

Finally, after several screaming matches and threats. Battles royale that claimed the lives of many plates, glasses and vases. The combatants signed an armistice. As long as Cynthia and Louis did not "consummate" their relationship before marriage? Mommy and daddy would allow it. 

Her parents were probably hoping it was just a phase.

Yep, you read that right folks. Poor bastard got blue balled, for years.

Still, things seemed to go well. For their freshman, sophomore and junior years they dated but never went too far. Then senior year arrived and "Johnny" finally gave up on trying to win Cynth over.

If he couldn’t have her, no one would. Or, actually, everyone would. As long as that "prick from the projects" didn't. 

So a couple of compromising photos, that looked worse than they actually were, later. A few threats to go to her parents. And some narcotics. Cynth agreed to do the same sorts of things she was doing with Louie. With Johnny.

Yeah, then with more manipulation and more drugs. The princess started doing a lot more with her blackmailer than with her boyfriend. And then doing a lot more with everyone else too, except her actual man.

The bitch even helped her rapist do the same thing to other girls. Anyone who had the hots for me, I mean, him.

And how does the kid know all this? Because that asshole told him everything yesterday. Well, I guess now, the day before yesterday. Played for him the thirty minute long highlights video he created to show at graduation but never got too. Because of, you know, the apocalypse. Also offered to sell him the videos he'd already been selling. For months.

Of course hindsight's 20/20. So all of the other shit going on in school that year. Smart kids getting addicted to drugs. Once good girls prostituting themselves. And his school sort of friends for years suddenly avoiding him? All made sense now. 

Same with lost scholarships he thought were in the bag. Mysteriously canceled internships. Cynthia's nose diving grades. It all added up.

Johnny even bragged about it. How far he had gone, and how far Cynthia had fallen, to destroy this kid's future. The ruin he had brought on Louis’s other friends. Just to deny him their support. All because his short pudgy ass couldn't get the girl he wanted, to like him.

I, he, had thought about killing the asshole right then and there. Certainly could have. His work ethic had carried over into the system apocalypse. So had reaped the rewards. And while he wasn't superman yet? Louis was certainly on the way up.

Instead? He calmly stood up. Crushed Johnny's laptop with his bare hands. Thanked him for his time. And left the now scared shitless douchebag sitting there.

Then he went to his mother and sister's place. Crying on their shoulders for comfort. Afterwards Louis went to the adventurer guild's bar and accepted one of the offers he often got. Spending that night fucking an incredibly hot twenty something sorceress.

But when he returned to his shop the next morning? Cynthia was waiting. Panicking. Saying his mother and sister went to their old apartment looking for mementoes, with a scavenger team, but had disappeared. 

Obviously a lie. He'd just seen them last evening. But a quick check confirmed they really were missing. So what other choice did he have?

Taking Cynth with him, the two headed straight for Carlton Heights. 

He's not sure when she drugged him. But Louis collapsed before lunch while frantically searching this complex. His last sight of Cynth was her saying she's "sorry" and "really loved you once."

Next was one of Johnny's thugs, Tony, rolling him down the stairs into the basement. And a waiting pack of goblins. Then being eaten alive while watching his mother and sister get raped to death.

Right before I, he, died. Louis tapped into some deep reservoir of rage. And used it to turn the entire basement into a lightning filled hell.

Jesus, need a drink after just remembering that. Welp, that's all she wrote for one Louis McConnell. Brought low by a busty dumb bitch and short fat douche.

<BledWhiteHeart: Are you going to avenge our champion or not?>

Oh, right, there is one other thing.