While we walked, I opened up and shunted my character screen off to the side panel, letting me move and function in the real world while still doing my level up thing.

I’d gotten the 2 extra points to distribute, and I put one of those into Strength since I’d been using it just now to kick Chuck to the curb. And then I put the other one into Finesse, figuring it’d be nice to be able to bob and weave a bit when I was literally bare-fisting fire.

With that out of the way, I let myself focus on climbing the first flight of stairs, getting a feel for the space and rhythm of it, then switching my attention back over to see what kind of card was waiting for me.

 

 

Schoolyard Bully

Level 1 (Common)(1CP)

 

Activate to add an additional intimidation point (per hit point of damage inflicted upon target) to your intimidation rolls, over the course of the next ten minutes. 1 hour cooldown.

 

‘Some of the most convincing words I’ve ever heard came from the end of a fist.’

 

Learn Chance 83% Would you like to study this skill now? Y/N

 

I shrugged and clicked yes, learning it on a 53 and slotting it. My card number changed to 11(14). Sounded like the sort of thing that I’d be using in a warehouse under a single swinging bulb while asked questions. Not useful now, but well useful later.

 

We carried on, letting Patches lead the way with his powerful sniffer and a simple command to “Follow the fire boy!”

 

Smart dog. Good dog.

 

Beyonce Blazes didn’t prove hard to find, not with Patches by our side. Joel and I followed behind him while he sniffed out the heat and flame that composed her. We headed floor by floor, letting him sniff the air of each landing for that hint of charcoal and briquette that meant she’d waltzed burning feet all over the place.

 

And finally, on the 15th floor, we scented her out. The smoke wasn’t too apparent to us, not at first. But Patches barked and sprinted and I knew that we had her. Running down the metal corridors, all of them bare and uninviting, it felt a little creepy.

 

I mean, I had a crap gun, so I’d probably have to fight this thing with my shocking fists, right? Which was going to suck because if I understood it all correctly, she was literally fire. I was going to be a fire-puncher and I guaranteed it was going to hurt.

 

But Joel was there, and I assumed he had a plan since he was backing off. Plus Patches was sprinting ahead, leading us into a section of corridor that was starting to wisp with whorls of smoke.

 

A door opened, a charred corpse fell out, and there she was, standing with her legs planted wide, eyes blazing like twin mini-suns in an orange-red body that flickered and smoked.

 

Patches stopped and growled, hackles raised and gums well exposed beneath sharp-pointed death.

 

I wasn’t sure how much good those were going to be against fire either.

 

“Eric Joel. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

 

Crisp and straight to the point. If she wasn’t about to try to burn us alive, I might have liked that about her. The fire elemental stood with her hips at an angle and one finger in the air as if she were on the verge of scolding us. Maybe she was.

 

“What you are doing is wrong, Beyonce. It’s always wrong. Why the hell the Boss sent you and Chuck here in the first place is beyond me. Kicking people out? Yeah, I get that. You need to make money. Killing them? Why? What’s it all for?”

 

Seeing Eric Joel the cat man so emotional struck a chord. I recessed into the crowded redlight district of my mind, remembering another guy. Fonash. Dude was living the American dream: he was going to be a football player for NYU. He was going to do great things, move on up, hit the NFL and lead the Jets to the Super bowl.

 

Fonash had died asking a local war chief why he’d burned his daughter on a pyre.

 

I felt my body tense, blood thunder through my veins. Before me the two of them continued to banter, a sort of tense verbal storm before the actual fight. But in my ears was the roar of those flames, the smoke of human flesh, a double tragedy on a stuffty, stuffty day.

 

I charged. Patches charged. Eric Joel, well, he caught on and followed a moment later, all the blah blah foreplay between them flying away like smoke in the wind.

 

Beyonce danced and dodged. I swung hard, an overhand arc that should have popped her gaslit face off of her dainty, cindered body. But she swung out and around and my hand clanged painfully off of a metal wall.

 

Patches bit at her leg but clamped on air while she pirouetted out of the way, a fire tornado that proceeded to engulf Eric Joel. I saw his health bar drag down and heard him scream.

 

It only made me madder.

 

With Beyonce stuck in one place, doing her damage, I yanked out my coffee maker.

 

I mean fluid is fluid right?

 

I was sure it would do double or triple damage to this freak. I flicked the switch and it grinded. The tornado began to relax, giving me the impression that this special attack literally trapped her on her target, and she was suddenly aware of the danger she was in.

 

“No, don’t!” she cried.

 

I let the coffee rip, spraying it over her body. Steam rose everywhere I hit her, patches of her flame simply vanishing before my onslaught. I watched it drop hard to zero. Beyonce fizzled, the flames dying away to show her physical body. It was a frightful thing composed of living, writhing ash.

 

Ash that collapsed in on itself into a pile on the floor while the roaring in my ears slowed and halted. Sensing my mental anguish, Patches loped over and pushed his wet nose into me.

 

I knelt down and reached out, enfolding him into my arms while I shook, my eyes still seeing red.

 

Eric Joel was stumbling a bit, all of the stuff seemingly burned off of him and a good portion of his cat fur gone as well.

 

But this was a game and he wasn’t dead, so I figured he’d be fine.

 

Besides, Eric seemed like a cat man who almost certainly had a rough backstory. He was probably pretty good at rolling with the punches.

 

“That was, what, fifteen seconds?” Eric Joel panted, not looking up. “Not what I expected. Thought we’d get burned up a lot more.”

 

Fonash popped up once more in my memory and this time he crinkled and blew away. Another messed up mistake that the world had dished out had been made better. His memory had been honored. I’d made my penance.

 

My shaking had stopped. I’d gotten back my senses, smelling the thick ozone of vanquished Beyonce and cooked cat man. Patches licked my face, digging his wet nose in to get as close as he possibly could and in my mind’s eye, I saw that I’d gotten 200 xps for the fight. She was a walk in the park, apparently.

 

Not worth a lot.

 

I also got a card, even though I hadn’t leveled up. Interesting. And there was another tab, a loot notification. I opened it up, looking to see what it had to say.

 

You have killed an enemy. Congratulations! To the victors go the spoils.

 

You have received ELEMENTAL ASH (1), Common Card (1), minor healing salve (3).

 

First up, the healing salves.

 

Minor Healing Salve

Heals 8-12

Heal time 5 seconds

 

These claimed to heal 8-12 HP over the course of 5 seconds, and were disposable once used.

 

I couldn’t stand to see Patches in pain. I applied the ointment, stinking heavily of medicinal menthol, from the silvery little pouch (more like a condiment packet) onto the burned areas while he whimpered. The little bar over his head had drained instantly down into the yellow, under 50%, but one salve brought him almost all the way back up to fully healthy.

 

Right.

 

I spread the second one onto him, and even though it only took a smidgen, the pouch was empty. Disposable was a bit of an understatement. I tossed the third one to Joel and gave him a nod.

 

Next, I tapped on the common card I’d just looted, and it flipped over to reveal Shake Ya Moneymaker.

 

Level 1 (Common)(1CP)

 

Double Charm bonus for any equipped Charm-increasing items. All money gained from Charm-related skill checks, or from looting enemies defeated through the use of Charm skills, grants an additional 20 credits.

 

‘Doesn’t really matter what you want to say, words fail on your tongue when I shake it your way.’

 

Learn Chance 83% Would you like to study this skill now? Y/N

 

This seemed utterly useless for a moment, until I remembered I’d just intimidated and convinced both enemies so far. 20 credits didn’t seem like a lot though. On the other hand, Double Charm sounded amazing. Especially considering all of my Charm-related bonuses already.

 

I mentally selected the card — then grimaced when it sparked in flame and crackled away into the air. A 91% hung before me, a clear failure of the dice rolls.

 

Ah well. It said the card was common, so it honestly wasn’t a tremendous loss.

 

A second box was behind the card and learn skill failure notifications. This one quite grand, embossed with digital bronze on its edges.

 

Quest Completed – Savior of the People

You’ve succeeded in deterring The Boss… this time. No word on whether (when) the retribution will be, and how severe (torturous) the attack in response to your actions here today. One thing’s for certain: people know you mean business. Here’s hoping you actually do mean business. And they will most likely respond accordingly.

 

Rewards: your pick of apartments in this building of East Gojira-X, +50 reputation with occupants of East Gojira-X, -100 reputation with The Boss, +200 reputation with Eric Joel.

 

Warning! Your relationship with The Boss has been reduced to Minor Annoyance. If you keep this up, you might yet achieve Rival status (-200), Significant Threat (-500) or perhaps even Bitter Enemy (-1000).

 

This box faded out of sight, only to be replaced by: Congratulations! Your relationship with Eric Joel has been upgraded to Favorable Acquaintance. You’ll need to get to 500 reputation to make him an Ally.

 

I looked over at the cat man, grinning his Cheshire smile. I wasn’t really good with new people. Besides Jack, anyhow. Not since my time in the dustbowl, fighting to keep people free and all of the monkey ass bullstuff.

 

Unless they were another army veteran like myself, I’d just would have these panic attacks, see them getting hurt, and move to stop it. I’d found myself kicking over trash cans to keep friends from getting hit by an IED. Screaming at people to get out of a crowded club because it was the prime target for a suicide bombing.

 

But he seemed alright. I was 99% sure that he was a computer NPC, and that somehow made it all the better. It wouldn’t mean so much to see him die.

 

Yeah, I’d be good with making him an Ally.

 

I closed out that box and it was followed by even more to deal with.

 

A whole new screen appeared, listing my relationships with various figures in Gojira-X. The list was absolutely endless, all organized into several color-coded columns. These seemed to be based on their strength: names in white with ashy colored backgrounds sounded most like end bosses: The Boss was one of these, along with the Silver Sword, Gojira Prime and FranticNeonNightmare. Each of them were labeled as gang factions, and the pistol icons beside them listed those four as the highest ranking.

 

The Boss, of course, sat at the very top of it all, with a number one next to their name.

 

Below this were a number of names with red backgrounds, even more orange and yellow, and some green, blue, or no background color at all, just clear.

 

Chuck, for instance, had an orange background.

 

Eric Joel was green, and had a little +200 next to his name. The Boss had -100, but Chuck’s was -200.

 

Made sense based on what Eric Joel had said. Plus, to be fair, Chuck probably didn’t like me jazzing up his cyber parts. Or me scaring him out of the building in front of all of those people.

 

After him was a yellow box that said East Gojira-X. It had a +50 next to it.

 

I was glad to see I had some admirers.

 

And I was there too. My background was green. My place in the rankings basically screamed come kill me, I’m a total noob.

 

I smirked. Let them try.

 

Tapping on East Gojira-X brought up a virtual map of the city, which… wow. It was roughly shaped like the city of Colorado Springs, but all the buildings now stretched up impossibly-far into the sky. Some had thin bridges stretching between them, while others had full-on platforms bridging the gaps, creating entire walkable neighborhoods sticking out above cloud cover.

 

Tiny holographic virtual flying cars zipped through the air high above the street level, while even more hovered down below. It was a bit overwhelming, but some parts of it felt familiar at least.

 

East Gojira-X was now highlighted in yellow, and it seemed to consist of less than a quarter of the city. My position, the red dot, sat on the edge. Zooming in, I saw that my building had become a four-winged t-shape, and it now extended upwards about a hundred floors. This area that I had +50 relations had a dozen buildings of various sizes, and it was listed to have almost ten-thousand people.

 

That felt like a small town. I wondered how many of them were real.

 

“You seeing this?” I asked Patches, pointing at the map. Patches woofed appropriately.

 

Playing with the map, I found that the max level of zooming was incredible. Angled correctly, with the right options pressed, I could actually just barely see myself, a little stick figure doing map manipulation gestures, the little doggo silhouette figure of Patches, and the hulking cat man beside me.

 

But there was a fog of war in play. I couldn’t see things on the map that I didn’t have eyes on in real life. Which was a shame because that would have been a hell of an exploit.

 

If I zoomed out, by jamming my hands together, I could just make out where Pueblo used to be in the south. Now, though, that whole area was ringed by a glowing purple boundary that the map proclaimed to be Hellcroft: Baal’s Reckoning. Next to it, in small script, were descriptors noting that noted it was hack and slash, role-playing, and action.

 

Out of curiosity I moved back to my area. Cloudcraft Revolution. There was a name I didn’t enjoy. Its descriptors were base-building, role-playing, action, and cyberpunk.

 

That jived with everything I’d seen so far.

I rolled north. There was also no sign of Denver anywhere, that part of the map now a district called Cthulu’s Calling. I kept scrolling over the state, reading over the names. Rise of the Divine, Strawberry Tales, Warriors of the Wild West . . . they kept on going, out of the state and forward.

 

I stopped rolling and thought. Maybe I could get everyone out of here and into a different genre. Strawberry Tales sounded quaint. It certainly didn’t seem like something filled with death dragons and fire elementals.

 

I rolled back over to it and selected it. A menu appeared, filled with options. But they were grayed out and garbled. Over top of them, in brilliant golden letters, I was informed that the place was local access only.

 

No fucking teleport on over. I guess we’d have to trek on over ourselves.

 

I closed it all down. Play the game, Moses on over to Strawberry Tales with all the humans I could grab . . . that was a solid plan. One that would require me to play the game some. I’d need to be stronger to get us through all of it and into the promised land.

 

I decided to check out the elemental ash. I took it out of the loot notification box and placed it in my hands, feeling it silky smoothness between them. In the corner of my eye I saw Eric Joel spread ointment around on his burns. The blisters disappeared, and pink skin turned back to the whitish it had been. Around the edges, fur sprang back to life instantly.

 

“Hey, Eric, what the heck do I do with this?” I asked. The ash glowed like rivulets of magma spread over a pure obsidian black.

 

“Sell it. Or, if you get a crafting recipe that uses it, use it.”

 

“—I’d hang on to that if I were you,” said another voice. The voice of a stranger.

 

His voice shook and quivered, hinted at a light body about ready to call it a life. All three of us jumped at the sound, dropping into battle stances. Beside me Patches growled, hackles raised. Together the three of us looked over to see the door to the next apartment over had swung open. An old man in brown robes was standing at its threshold, staring at them.

 

“She was coming for me, you know,” he added. He had a goatee, all salt and pepper with gnarled knots that suggested he hadn’t been grooming or cleaning himself recently. It was fascinating to watch them bob as he spoke.

 

“They all were coming for me. This protection money racket story was just an excuse that Al or, excuse me, Deus Ex, had to make to follow hardline protocols.” He made air quotes with his fingers at the words ‘Deus Ex’ and he sighed. “It really thinks of itself as divine.”

 

I nodded. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. Eric, what is happening right now?”

 

Eric Joel shook his head. “Nope. Don’t ask me. I’ve got no idea, Chief.”

 

“Maybe Patches knows.” I turned to my doggo and lathered the sarcasm on real good. “Is he talking dog language over there, buddy?”

 

Patches barked and I locked eyes back with the man. “Let’s start with something simple. How about you tell us all about yourself and then we get into the technobabble, hey?”