by Dan Thomas
Ticket wiped the sweat and blood from her brow. “Thanks, Holic.”
“No problem,” he replied as he came to a stop. “Look, we’ve got to take down Remington and his mount, I think if we bring a load of Stranglers down on top of it, it might slow them down long enough for us to deal with them.”
Pez nodded. “Sounds like a plan, but someone’s gotta get up high first.”
“I’m on it.” Ticket looked up at the sprawling branches above them.
Holic raised an eyebrow. “Well, that was easy.”
They all turned as they heard yelling behind them, Mamba had leaped from the undergrowth and was charging toward them, a spiked mace in hand.
Pez stepped forward to meet him, feinting high before swinging his club low, too fast for Mamba to dodge, hitting his torso full force and taking him off his feet.
“Take that, you fucking casual,” Pez said as he bought his club down in a finisher.
“Nice job!” Ticket gave him a nod before running at the nearest tree. She tilted her body back as she took three steps up the trunk, then grabbed onto TOD’s back legs as he took off from her shoulder, beating his wings, allowing her to almost walk up the tree.
“Damn, I kinda want one of those things.” Holic watched Ticket’s easy ascent.
Pez sighed. “Just tame a little Pteranodon or just something that doesn’t need hours of charging and large sums of money.”
“Good point. But then again, if we manage to take the Ravager loot home with us, this will be an even better haul than we thought.” Holic turned back toward the Majungatholus, just as it lunged for Chopsticks, who went to sidestep but was too slow, the sword-like teeth of the creature ripped into his arm. He staggered back, falling, only to be whipped into the air by one of the few intact Stranglers.
“Shit,” Holic said quietly. “Shit!” he then exclaimed as he watched the Mononykus writhing around in the net, trying to get to its feet. “I forgot that was nearly done.”
Pez slung his club over his shoulder and grabbed his bow. “Just get the Mononykus out of here. I’ll keep Remington busy.”
“Gotcha!” Holic ran for the dinosaur, which looked around wildly. Rushing forward, he grabbed the net off it, tossing it to one side. Focusing on the dinosaur, he mentally selected it, causing the Mononykus to snap its attention to him as a little green icon appeared at Holic’s periphery, letting him know that he was actively in control of one animal. He then mentally told it to run for cover and hide, the command being transmitted to the Shard. The little feathered dino obeyed without hesitation, darting across the jungle floor and into the thick vegetation outside the clearing. They were so close to pulling this off, to having a decent victory against the Ravager Crew. Now they just had to finish dealing with this big predator.
Holic moved toward the edge of the clearing as well, firing off another arrow at the charging Majungatholus. They didn’t seem to be doing much more than pissing it off, but that was enough for now.
“Come on, come on,” Holic said through gritted teeth as he stood his ground, the gap between him and those huge teeth quickly shrinking. Pez was frantically trying to catch up with it to throw something, but his distraction hadn’t been overly effective.
His eyes darted up to search for Ticket, but he quickly brought his attention back and ran, trying to keep himself alive for as long as possible.
With his stamina nearly full again, his legs carried him across the churned-up ground, around the edge of the vine patch. The Majungatholus immediately turned to try and cut him off, rearing its head up, ready to bite down at him as soon as it was close enough.
There was a splashing sound from above.
Holic glanced behind him to see a mass of Stranglers and branches falling toward the dinosaur and rider. Remington looked up into the trees just in time to see the vines coming down, the tendon-like plants flailing around as they fell.
With a thud, the net of Stranglers hit the Majungatholus and the ground around it, rapidly curling in on themselves with cracking sounds as loud as gunshots, tangling the legs and body of the dinosaur.
It tripped up mid charge, its momentum and weight working against it. Holic threw himself as far out of the way as he could as the beast hit the ground and slid several feet forward, its limbs all tied up.
The Majungatholus slid to a stop with a deep groan.
Holic got back to his feet. He looked up to see Ticket gracefully gliding down from the lower canopy, holding onto TOD’s legs. With its wings stretched out, TOD flapped gently a couple of times as her feet hit the ground.
Holic let out a sigh of relief as he watched the big carnivore struggling fruitlessly at its bonds.
“Woohoo!” Pez let out a yell, jumped, and punched the air. “We did it!”
Holic grinned. “Yeah, holy cow, we did.”
Pez jogged over and gave Ticket a high five. “Beautifully executed.”
She gave a little bow, laughing. “I thought that was pretty cool, I’m glad you guys did, too.”
“I thought that was pretty sweet, too!” a voice called from above them.
They all looked up to see Chopsticks dangling some ten feet high from his legs, waving at them. “I think it would also be pretty cool if someone could get me down from here.”
Holic snorted. “Yeah? How are we supposed to do that?” He waved back and laughed. “Have a nice life, I guess!”
“Aw, don’t be like that, you need me! I’m the brains of this outfit! Be a pal, yeah?” Chopsticks called back.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get him.” Ticket looked to TOD on her shoulder. “You got one last flight in you?”
TOD gave a little hum, opened its wings, and took off, flying up toward Chopsticks.
“Nice! Now I get to ride the dragon,” he hollered.
TOD reached him, with a swipe of its talons, cut the vines, and went to grab Chopsticks’ legs before freezing, and they both plummeted to the ground.
“I guess not then?” Pez snickered.
With a grunt, Chopsticks got to his feet, grabbing the curled-up dragon. “Well, there goes that quarter of my health I didn’t need.”
Holic put away his bow and looked around at the trampled vine patch. This would definitely leave a dent in the Ravagers’ arsenal.
Chapter Four
Chopsticks and Holic stood around the tied-up Majungatholus. The dinosaur no longer thrashed around, it now lay still, though its fierce eyes were still bright and alert, watching every movement, and they didn’t dare move too close.
“I’m glad they chose the jungle to ambush us, I sure wouldn’t want to come up against that thing in the open plains.” Holic watched the Majungatholus as it curled its lip back in a snarl.
“Yeah, we’d have been screwed for sure,” Chopsticks replied, taking another step away from the prone dino.
There was a brief pause before Holic turned to his friend. “Chopsticks, I’m going to be honest. I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this.”
“What do you mean?” Chopsticks frowned. “We just kicked their asses!”
“I know.” Holic kicked some of the crushed vegetation at his feet. “It’s just...how on earth did they have this much to just throw at us? Like, I get that they probably weren’t expecting to lose to us, but the big carnivore, the gun, they’re not easy to come by, so why didn’t they use it in a base raid or something? I mean, apart from Ticket’s knife, we rarely even carry metal weapons on us unless we’re fighting something worthwhile, so we don’t lose too much by dying to a raptor in the middle of nowhere. It just seems excessive.”
Chopsticks looked thoughtful for a minute before shrugging. “I dunno, maybe they got lucky with an easy win against a wealthier crew, then got cocky with us. All I know is that it’s their loss and our gain.”
“You’ve got a point, I suppose,” Holic said, looking over as Pez approached. “All good?”
Pez spun the flintlock pistol around on his finger. “All good, these guys had some nice stuff on
them. I know I’ve got my rifle, but these flintlocks just do so much more damage and are so cheap to fire. Nearly took Ticket to half health with that one shot. Plus,” he brandished his arm to show that he was now sporting Striker’s armor, made with wide plates of metal and bone, held together on thick leather of some sort. “Definitely a lucky break.”
“No kidding, I reckon we take this stuff and go straight for a raid on them.” There was an eagerness in Chopsticks’ voice.
Holic held out a cautionary hand. “Now, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, guys, just because we beat them here doesn’t mean we should go looking for fights right away.”
“Well, now we’re on to the next question, what do we do with this?” Pez gestured to the trapped Majungatholus.
“I feel kind of sorry for it,” Ticket said as she joined them, holding her curled-up dragon in her hands.
“We could replace the Shard with one of ours, take it for our own?” Chopsticks suggested, looking at the others hopefully.
Holic shook his head. “I don’t think so, we don’t have any Creeping Amica left after Abe and Lis. We should get back to base before the Ravagers have a chance to attack us again.”
“Good point.” Chopsticks looked to the ground. “I guess while it’s tied up, I’ll deactivate the Shard?”
“Won’t it go back to the Ravagers?” Pez asked. “Because I’m telling you, man, that does not sit well with me. I’d rather the thing stayed here and rotted than give it back to them.”
“It depends on the level of bonding they have with it. Taking the Shard off disables the mental link anyone would have with it, but if they’ve bonded with it, it might go back to the base. Though I doubt it, these dinos are all about survival, it’d probably just go back to being wild, especially since I don’t see the Ravagers as the kind of people to bother creating a bond with their dinos.” Chopsticks gingerly stepped forward, the slitted eyes of the dinosaur watching his every move. He reached out to the small semi-transparent disc on the side of its head and touched it. The Quartz began to glow as Chopsticks counted to ten, before it became dull and inert, then crumbled to dust.
Chopsticks dragged his attention away from the dino as a grunt from Remington reminded them he was still there. Digging his fingers into the dirt, the injured Ravager began to pull himself across the forest floor away from his downed mount, his heavy armor holding him back.
“Hey, you look as if your leg is broken.” Chopsticks reached for his spear.
“I’ll help him with that.” Pez’s eyes flashed with renewed anger. No one stopped him as he strode toward the other player, his flint knife in his hand. “Why did you and your goon squad come after us?”
“Fuck you, that’s why,” Remington snarled.
Pez grabbed him by his breastplate and pressed his knife to the player’s throat. “That so? ‘Cause it looks like you’re the guys that got fucked here. Bet the others are going to be pissed about your losses today.”
Remington snorted forcefully. “We’ll be back, and with our spoils from today…” Remington’s face contorted into a grin. “We’ll replace our losses and then some.”
Chopsticks peered over Pez’s shoulder. “Spoils? What do you mean?”
Remington sneered at him. “You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure.”
Anger flashed across Pez’s face and he raised his knife, ready to plunge it in the player’s heart and put him out of his misery. “You’re not worth it.” Pez let him fall back to the ground and stalked back to the others, Chopsticks in tow.
“What was all that about?” Holic asked as Pez and Chopsticks returned.
Pez shrugged. “He seems to think they’ve come out on top of this somehow.”
“Yeah, I just don’t see...” Chopsticks’ face dropped. “The dinos at the mine.”
“What do you mean?” Realization hit Holic squarely in the gut. “They haven’t...” Holic stood rooted to the spot as the player on the ground laughed.
Ticket marched up to the Majungatholus and held TOD under one arm while she raised her knife. With one downward swipe, she sliced through the thickest vines around the creature’s body. “Let’s go before that thing gets up.”
They took off at a run, staying together, as the large dinosaur struggled free. A movement to their right startled them as they reached the edge of the clearing, and they swerved, ready to defend themselves again. Holic let out a long breath as the Mononykus appeared out of the brush, eyeing the group dubiously, but following along, presumably at Chopsticks’ command.
Then the sound of the Majungatholus righting itself reached them, along with a scream that was quickly cut off. Remington had met a well-deserved grisly end.
Holic cursed the Ravagers. Ever since they’d settled down in Primeva, they’d had it in for Holic and his friends.
“Why do they hate on us?” Ticket asked. “They take being mean girls to another level.”
“Do you think they know us?” Holic had asked himself the same questions countless times. There was something so vindictive about the Ravagers that he had convinced himself that they must know each other outside of the game. It was like they had a personal vendetta toward the Coprolite Crew.
“How could they?” Chopsticks asked, running with the Mononykus at his heel. “For them to know where to find us in game, one of us must have told them.”
“Maybe we did. It could be anyone. Let’s face it, Chopsticks pisses so many people off in real life, we’d struggle to narrow it down to one person who knows where our base is and wants to destroy us.” Pez panted as they ran.
“I don’t tell anyone who our Crew is, or what our usernames are for that very reason,” Chopsticks retorted sharply. “And there’s no way they could have found out, you know what the security is like for personal information in this game.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Ticket’s sharp tone stopped their bickering at once. “Don’t you get it? We could lose everything. No one’s at the base and the traps and wall will only hold for so long if they’re bringing that kind of force.”
With no further words, they ran on with the Mononykus trailing behind them. He might be worth a small fortune at the Hub but compared to the dinosaurs they had trained for years and the tools they had built and bought, he was worthless. Not to mention the haul of ore and flux, which was already so difficult to come by in Primeva.
“All that mining,” Pez grumbled as they ran.
If the Ravagers had taken all their stuff… He shoved thoughts of what he’d like to do to them to one side. He had to focus on running. Anger now would only lead to arguing among themselves. If they got to the mine, they might still have a chance at catching the Ravagers or tracking them down.
A large leaf flicked back in his face and he slapped it away violently.
“I still don’t get how they managed to tame that massive carnivore,” Chopsticks was murmuring to no one in particular. “Our Abelisaurus are like one third its size. And we don’t go using them for just anything.”
“I also want to know how they knew exactly where we were.” Pez and Chopsticks at least had something in common as they burst into the clearing at the base of the ridge. Holic looked frantically around, but it was empty.
“Charlie could have wandered off anywhere, he wasn’t tied up or anything,” Chopsticks suggested weakly.
Without another word, the four Crewmates scrambled up the scree slope onto the rocky plateau.
“Gone.” Holic’s bitterness at the way the day had turned out was mirrored in the faces of the rest of the crew.
Pez kicked the ground, sending a shower of loose stones over the edge of the cliff. “I want to rip them apart!”
“Son of a bitch!” Holic stamped his foot. “How do they always get the better of us?”
Pez breathed sharply. “We go after them, we hit their base. Striker and the others won’t respawn for an hour, and Jupiter and Saturn aren’t exactly fast, and Jupiter’s stubborn as a bull. If we leave now, we can ge
t to their base before they get back, hit them while they’re weak.”
“With what?” Holic snapped. “We’ve only got basic weapons on us, we’re injured, and the only help we have is a prehistoric anteater, and an out-of-battery dragon. We’d have to go back to our base first, and by then they’ll have all made it home. And they’ve got more players in their crew than us anyway.”
“So what? We just let them get away with it. We just let them take our stuff?” Pez snapped.
“Or lay siege with sticks and stone, huh? ‘Cuz that’s pretty much all we’ve got right now,” Holic retorted.
Ticket stepped in between the two of them. “If we retaliate now, we don’t stand a chance. We need better weapons and dinos. We need better defenses. We need a better base.”
Chopsticks stood back, resting his hand on the back of the small Mononykus. “Even I know it’s not worth it.”
Pez pinched the bridge of his nose. “All that ore, all that gear. We brought the best tools we had to sink that mine, the auger...it’ll take us weeks, if not months, to recover from that.”
Holic nodded solemnly. “They’ve crippled us. We’re not exactly in a position to make any money by raiding.”
“We’ve just gotta work hard.” Chopsticks nodded as if agreeing with himself. “Yeah, we focus on taming, watch the list of new additions, trade between the worlds, build up a fund to buy an arsenal, and hit them with everything we’ve got.”
“So that’s it, we keep our heads down and let them trample all over us. They have Charlie. They have Saturn and Jupiter.” Pez was not letting this go. “Ticket can track them.”
“No!” Holic yelled. “No.”
All eyes turned to him in silence. He shook his head. “I’m done, I’m so fucking done.” With a mental command, Holic brought up the menu.
“Max, come on,” Chopsticks pleaded as Holic hit quit.