Abrasive is about as polite as I can manage at the moment. It’s a step up from breaking these asshole’s jaws. I’m only partially aware of a sense of causality, of consequence, but it’s enough. Hurting them would get me kicked out. Getting kicked out would deny Mom treatment. Dad’s got my life in a backpack. Fuck him. I need to play my game.
The thought comes out of nowhere. Between frantically writing application essays and getting everything turned in before the deadline to come here, it’s been almost a week since I last played. And now that I’m aware of that, I’m aware of the waning influence of the game, like going too long between doses of medicine. I need to stop these ass-clowns and I need to get back to my game, if for no other reason than so I don’t hurt them. Also, so I don’t go back to prison.
When the backpack lands in pastel short’s outstretched hands I yank it out of his arms.
“Hey! What gives, man?”
I shove the backpack into Shorty’s chest and start walking back to my dorm room. If I stay I might hurt these idiots. I’d really, really like to.
“Hey, he’s talking to you!” It’s the other pastel shorts talking.
I ignore him and step into my room. An instant later shorty joins me.
I stare down at him as he closes the door behind him.
“That wasn’t an invitation to be my bitch,” I say.
He blushes like a little girl and stammers for a full ten seconds before finally managing to say, “What?”
I’m tempted to go all Pulp Fiction on him and tell him to say what again, but I don’t. I just quietly wait for him to process. Some people are like that, asking dumb questions when if they’ll just stop and think for a few seconds or examine what’s in front of them they’ll realize the answer’s right there in front of them. My silence seems to unnerve shorty, because he starts stammering again. I groan inside. Now I just want this guy to spit it out.
Eventually he does.
“Oh-oh! Oh, I’m uh, I’m Brett Preston,” he says.
“Good for you. Now get out of my room.”
He starts stammering again. I don’t feel like waiting however long it’s going to take him this time to finish so I make to open the door. That seems to spur him on though and he manages to spit out, “It’s my room too, actually!”
I freeze with my hand on the doorknob.
“You are, Aaron Moretti, yeah?” he says.
I let my hand fall. Dammit. I was here far enough before classes were due to begin that I’d hoped to have my new cell to myself for a few days at least.
I walk past him to flop down on my bed next to my backpack. “That’s me.”
“Great,” he says, far too cheerfully. “I’m your new roommate.”
Remarkably I’d figured that out on my own.
“Thanks for helping me out back there,” he says.
I grunt. “Don’t let them take your stuff.”
Speaking of stuff. I pull out my phone. With my right hand holding it the Kaiju Wars Online app appears. I need to play it today or I’m in trouble with the Doc. Doc, Dad, seems like no matter what I do there’s someone with some kind of power over me wanting me to do something.
“I’ll do my best,” Brett says, half laughing. “I’ve got the rest of my stuff being shipped up tomorrow. Think you could give me hand bringing it up?”
I pull my gaze away from my phone to glance around the broom closet they’ve got us situated in. “You’ve got more stuff?”
He grinned. “Yeah. We’ll have an actual television and my consoles.”
Okay, that would be an improvement. But it didn’t change that I needed to play my game and I really didn’t want to do it in front of Brett.
The sound of the guys in too colorful short shorts rose outside as they screamed about something. This was followed by footsteps and they were gone. At least there was that.
“Cool,” I say. I kind of mean it too. By necessity I’ve been more of a PC gamer than console, but this could be fun.
“Mind giving me a hand getting it up here?”
I sigh. “Sure, but I need a favor.”
“What’s up?”
“Clear off for a few hours. I need to check in with some people,” I say, holding up my phone. “Things aren’t good at home.” Sadly, not a lie.
“Oh, sure,” he says awkwardly. At least he’s not stuttering. “How long do you need?”
“Long as you can give me,” I say, trying to sound apologetic. Last time I played I’d lost hours.
“Alright,” he says, slowly making his way to the door. “I can explore campus or something. See you around six-ish?”
That’s about four hours off. Should be plenty. “Yeah, thanks, Brett.”
He shrugs, looks like he’s about to say something, then decides against it before closing the door behind him. I’m going to have to figure something out if I want to play without an audience. I couldn’t really say why the idea of being watched while I played bothers me. It hadn’t at the airport.
The only thing I can think of is that there was no one there that I’d have to talk to or see again. Nobody to really watch or pay attention to me. Whatever it is, I’m going to have to get over it quick. The dorms might not be as restrictive as prison but they offered about the same amount of privacy.
Laying back on my bed, propped up against the wall with my pillow behind me, I thumb the Kaiju Wars Online app. The menu screen pulls up again and again all the options except for KAIJU are greyed out. I select the only option available to me and gasp.
The blob is gone and in its place is a monster.
Chapter Nine
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My kaiju looks like the lovechild of a dinosaur and a tiger, with a feline face and powerful limbs, including a tail easily as long as the kaiju is tall. Standing upright on its hind, feline legs, it has a thick black hide decorated with silver stripes and its face is set off with glowing red eyes. A pair of bat-like ears stick out to either side of its head. They should look silly but combined with the three horns growing from its face like a triceratops, they give it a distinctive character.
What really catches my eye though are the spikes. My kaiju has them in abundance. Running down his back starting from the base of his skull, broad plates run in twin rows down his length until they reach the small of his back. There they change, becoming what I can only describe as spikes. Long spikes, like those at the end of a stegosaurus’s tail, but running down the entire length of my kaiju’s tail instead of simply capping off the tip. Anyone who gets in the way of that thing’s swing is going to get impaled. I almost miss the pair of similar spikes sprouting from his shoulder. A shoulder check from my boy would ruin anyone’s day.
Whatever else my kaiju is capable of, melee is definitely its specialty.
Welcome back, Mr. Moretti.
Great, the damn guide is still here.
I am here to assist you, the guide says. This kaiju is designed to complement your playstyle as determined by your previous session. Would you like to try again or would you like to assign your stats?
I could try again?
If you wish to try again this kaiju will be deleted and you will start over. Are you sure that this is what you’d like to do?
What? No! Dammit, is this thing reading my mind?
The neural connection between us is strengthening. Soon you will be able to converse with me. For now, please make certain that your directions are clear and in direct reaction to my question. Would you like to try again or would you like to assign your kaiju’s stats?
Assign stats. Definitely assign stats.
A new menu opened next to my kaiju with six statistics listed.
Level 1
HP 5
Attack 4 (+2 Feline Build. +2 Defensive Weaponry.)
Defense 4 (+2 Defensive Weaponry.)
Special Attack 3
Special De
fense 3
Speed 5 (+2 Feline Build.)
My eye catches the Feline Build and Defensive Weaponry notes. Weird that those numbers are in parenthesis. It doesn’t look as if they’ve been calculated out into the total yet. Why is that?
Bonus statistics from build will be calibrated after you have spent your ability points.
It probably has something to do with keeping the system streamlined. That has to be it. They are there now just to let me know that they were coming before I assigned my points. I consider my kaiju’s build. Six statistics, two sets of 5, 4, and 3. This array must be the optimization the stupid guide voice had been talking about. I remember taking a lot of hits and using my stupid blob’s body as a weapon. I especially remember being frustrated by how slow the thing was. Hands down that had been my biggest irritation.
So, Speed and HP had been maxed. Special Attack and Special Defense are clearly my dump stats.
Typically in an RPG I would aim to optimize my strengths, allowing them to compensate for my character’s glaring flaws by specializing. But this isn’t a typical RPG. Letting something become a dump stat seems exceptionally dangerous for this game. Considering the array, I might not have a choice. How many points do I have to spend making my monster?
You have fifteen points remaining.
Fifteen. And was it a one to one buy in ratio?
Yes.
Damn creepy mind-reading machine.
I am sorry. I do not understand that command.
Groaning, I go about assigning my points. I definitely want to build upon my strengths. There’s a golden rule in RPG’s. You can’t do anything if you’re dead. HP is always your friend. Much as I like the idea of a super-fast kaiju, HP had to be my first priority.
I start pumping in points and cap out after spending 5.
You have reached the limit for points you can spend on this ability.
Terrific. A cap of ten. I easily had enough to max out my speed. Only…I already had Feline Build adding to that. If 10 was considered high, then I’m already going to be pretty close. I drop a point into it and considered my options.
My biggest irritant hadn’t actually been my lack of speed—though that had certainly played a part. No, what had pissed me off the most was that green shit the little cop-aliens had been shooting at me. That stuff had glowed. I was willing to bet that that meant they correlated to Special Defense, rather than Defense. That made sense, right? Energy projectiles and crap go with “special?”
The useless guide doesn’t offer any insight. Of course not. This is when it would go quiet.
With my theory in mind, I focus my points on my Special Defense dump stat. It eats into my remaining points but I max it out too, all the while hoping I’m not sentencing my kaiju to suck-dom. This guy is way too cool to make suck because of a poor statistics decision.
With only two points remaining I drop another in Attack and Defense.
Bonus points, the guide says, and another +2 appear by both my HP and Special Defense stats. 10 must be some kind of benchmark, but only if you get there solely by spending points. Dammit.
My stats now read:
Level 1
HP 12
Attack 10
Defense 7
Special Attack 3
Special Defense 12
Speed 8
With ten as the barometer for what was considered high, I have a pretty even array. Not a min-maxed monster, but I’m pretty sure my spikey boy can hold his own. As if in agreement, my kaiju shakes his head, huge ears flopping about. Whoever Doc had got to program this thing had done a great job. I swear I can almost feel my kaiju’s personality. He shifts, restless, as if eager to get back into the fight.
Good boy, I think at him, and he snorts.
Okay, maybe this game doesn’t totally suck. Let’s see what all he can do.
I eye my Special Attack stat skeptically. I hate having an ability that low but I don’t know how I could have done things differently when I’d been playing the blob before. Could the thing have shot acid if I’d spent more time trying to figure it out instead reenacting Rampage? Who knows. Maybe actually using that stat enabled by an ability like Feline Build or Defensive Weaponry. What would that be? Fire Breath?
The thought of my boy bellowing out a great stream of fire and burning down that alien city is a happy one. Unlikely though. Still, smashing it all to pieces seems like a great alternative.
Alright, I think at the machine, let’s take my boy for a test run.
Confirm, you want your kaiju’s name to be “My Boy?”
Fuck no!
Please designate a name for your kaiju or allow a random name to be generated.
I think for a moment. My first thought upon seeing my kaiju was that it looked like a blend between a tiger and a dinosaur. It was a tiger-dinosaur-kaiju. I played around for a few seconds with those words before settling on Taisaur. I briefly consider a number of funny or wildly inappropriate names—hell, it’s something every gamer’s done at least once—but this kaiju seems somehow connected to me. It’s built the way it is because of the way my anger had fed into the program while I’d been playing and giving it a dumb name seems disrespectful, weird as that sounds. Especially since I’m not sure that Taisaur is actually a good name at all.
Whatever. I’m over it and ready to play.
With Taisaur now built and named the other two menu options are available to me. I think about going to HUB for a second but select ATTACK instead. I’m eager to get back to that city and level it flat.
And then that’s where Taisaur and I are. Only this city isn’t leveled. Two suns are shining up in the sky and I laugh. Someone must have had Star Wars on the brain when they designed this level. Then I take a look at Taisaur, a good look. He’s barely bigger than the damn blob! Taller and longer, but all told he’s got less mass. What the hell? How is this supposed to be a kaiju?
He’s all of maybe fifty feet tall. Godzilla in the very first movie was more than three times this size! I’m still on the scale of King Kong, not city stomping kaiju levels of big. Whatever. Taisaur’s wicked enough that we’ll tear this whole place down.
A green blast shoots at Taisaur and I barely manage to make him duck in time. The blast goes harmlessly past, but it’s way too big to have belonged to one of those police officers from before. I spin around and fine that this time I’m not facing some unprepared city that needs to call in support. No, the tanks are back.
There’s three of them and they’ve all got their big ass cannons leveled right at me.
TAISAUR
Chapter Ten
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The game’s not waiting for me to get my bearings this time around. Easy mode is officially over. The hover tanks open fire and I throw myself to the left, right into a building, tearing my way through it. Taisaur is fast.
So fast I find myself laughing. He might not be as big as I want him to be but he’s about a million times better than that crappy blob monster.
The building crumbles behind me, crushing an untold number of people. One of the alien police officers on the ground starts shooting his green shit at me but my health bar doesn’t even move. Either the damage is so pitiful it’s not making a perceptible difference or I was right about my Special Defense stat. I find myself grinning. Either way, it looks like pumping up those two stats for all that they were worth is paying off.
I fling a small hovercraft at the cop, which crushes him, and then take off down the street like a rocket. Taisaur is so fast that I’m smashing through another building to come up behind the tanks before they’ve finished making it to the building I tore through a few seconds ago. I launch myself on them, crushing the one on the left beneath my bulk, slamming it down into the ground, and pivoting to catch the other two with my tail.
The one nearest Taisaur lucks out and misses the spikes, catching only the m
eat of the tail, which still strikes with enough force to knock it clear over. The other hover tank isn’t so lucky. A spike goes clean through it, skewering it like a kabob before Taisaur shakes his tail and sends it flying through the air into another building where it explodes. The building comes down.
Oh yeah, this is a lot better.
Without the tanks I charge headlong into the buildings on the side of the road, lowering Taisaur’s head so that he charges horns first. It’s not quite like dominos. Taisaur tears through them like wet paper, and thrashes his tail as he goes, puncturing and widening. Smashing in and demolishing on the exit. He’s like a high caliber bullet. The buildings shake and fall behind him and I swear I can almost hear screams as they smash the little alien people. If I eat them do I gain health?
Taisaur bursts out from the end of the block, covered in dust, and I pause long enough to grab someone off the street and toss them in his mouth. Only after do I realize that my health bar hasn’t actually dropped. The bar beneath it though is filling up quickly. I still have no idea what it’s for. Either way I continue my rampage through the city.
Building after building falls. Another tank rounds a corner and blasts me with a green burst of energy. My health bar drops, but not nearly as much as it did back when I played the blob. Now it does about as much damage as the police’s guns. Maybe a fraction more.
I laugh. There’s nothing that they can do to stop me. I charge the tank head on, soaking up its energy blasts like sunshine, until Taisaur simply runs it over, smashing it into the ground beneath his bulk.
There’s a familiar sound after the tank explodes. The saucer-things are coming in for another airstrike. I throw Taisaur sideways into a building and the world flashes white. An instant later the building is gone and Taisaur’s standing in a smoking crater, a quarter of his health gone. A quarter. We’d gone from an insta-kill hit to a quarter hit. That’s a hell of an improvement.
How To Train Your Kaiju Page 5