Kaiju- Battlefield Surgeon

by Matt Dinniman

  Renault was to approach Jenk and challenge him to single combat. He had readily agreed to this once we explained that the lycan had done great harm to Clara. Renault’s reasoning for the challenge was that Jenk’s frog had killed several close friends of his during her rampage, and he was there to collect the debt. This was just the sort of mini-quest that would show up in a game for it to be believable.

  If Jenk accepted the challenge, he was to be arrested for dueling. If he declined the challenge, Renault and his fellows would attack anyway.

  If Jenk was smart, he’d immediately recognize the danger he was in, and he’d attempt to flee. He’d cast his shield spell, the same one he’d used during his assault on Kinnegad. Then he’d rush out of the city. He could then deal with the fine next time he was in town. We were ready for this.

  “He’s trying to weasel out of the duel. Renault looks like he might be wavering. Shit. I wonder what his charm is. Knowing that asshole, he probably has it maxed out. Oh god, he’s shaking Renault’s hand!”

  “Oh hell,” I said. “Plan B! Do it now!”

  Clara dropped the red scarf off the edge of the building. One building over, Jar and a couple of his street kid friends were now overturning pots that contained about two hundred glass hops, the luminescent grasshopper bugs that Olga couldn’t get enough of. They upturned the pots on the very edge of the building, placing them where some of them would leap off and then land in the midst of the city patrol.

  This last-ditch effort was a little obvious for my taste, but hopefully Jenk would think the grasshoppers came from the demons circling above.

  “Oh god, it’s working!” Clara announced. “One of the bugs landed in the hair of a worm surgeon guard, and Olga just shot her tongue out. Only she sucked in the entire guard, not just the bug.”

  Gunfire cracked while Clara gave me a play-by-play. I did not dare peek my head over the corner.

  “He’s really fast with his handguns. He shot Renault. Poor guy. He killed a few more guards. And like you said, he’s cast his shield. It’s like a half-circle. He’s looking around now, shooting any guards that appear. Shit, man. He killed all eight of them in like five seconds. Olga is going crazy for the grasshoppers. She really loves those things.”

  “Shit,” I said. Renault was going to be pissed when he regenerated. It was his fault though.

  Via Renault, we had warned the animal control officers that there might be trouble right outside their offices. Unlike Renault, these folks had a real score to settle. I imagined a rich lycan strolling into their office and throwing down a ton of cash to bail his murdering frog out didn’t sit too well with them.

  “The shield is gone,” Clara said. She remained invisible. She’d had to renew the spell at least four times now.

  “One of the fae cast the counterspell. The brownies aren’t taking any chances now. They’re focusing on Olga… Yep, Olga is down. Captured in a net spell. She’s definitely not nearly as strong as she was before. Jenk is running and shooting. He is really good with those things. Those guns shoot bullets, but he doesn’t ever reload. I wonder where he got them.”

  The crack, crack, crack of traditional gunfire intermixed with pulse rifles was an odd juxtaposition, like a sci-fi show melding into an episode of Gunsmoke.

  Above, I noticed even the pazuzu had stopped their swooping about to watch the gunplay far below.

  “He’s running for the gazebo. He’s not gonna make it. There’s a couple chasers coming down the road in his direction, and he doesn’t seem them yet. No, wait. He’s turned the corner, going into an alley. Holy shit!”

  “What?” I said, starting to sit up.

  “Stay down,” she hissed. Clara changed her position. I couldn’t see her, but I sensed her movements and heard the rocks scattering on the rooftop. “He just leaped from the ground all the way up to the roof of the building next to us. It’s one story shorter than this one, so like six stories up. If he comes this way, he’s going to see you.”

  “What is he doing now?”

  “He’s peering over the edge. He’s looking the other way for now. There are hundreds of guards swirling about down there. I think he might be settling in to wait it out. Nobody saw his jump up.”

  “Okay,” I said. I was now stuck on the ground, leaning against a stone chimney. “You gotta go down there and tell the guards where he is. Tell them he can jump, so they have to put someone on all the roofs, including this one. If he runs, hopefully he won’t run in this direction and see me.”

  Clara seemed to hesitate. “Okay,” she finally said. I heard the distinctive whir of her wings engaging. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back. I’ll have to turn off my invisibility to talk to the guards though.”

  “Do it on the other side of this building,” I said. “He won’t be able to see you.”

  “Keep your head down,” she said. “Don’t risk it.”

  She didn’t need to remind me.

  I listened as she buzzed off.

  I stayed in my position on the roof, but I moved around the stone chimney, putting it between myself and the next roof over.

  I need an invisibility spell.

  I quickly scrolled through my available spells list. I didn’t have that option anywhere. I’d spent most of my more recent skill points on several charm-enhancing and rifle-aiming skills, leaving me with only 22 skill points, which I was saving for emergencies.

  If Jenk seeing you and deciding to unplug your rig isn’t an emergency, then I don’t know what is.

  I spent five skill points on a level 20 skill I’d been eyeing for some time. It was called Magic Bloom, and it added green waypoints to your minimap, showing you invisible sources of magic.

  The moment it activated, my map became awash in green lights. I realized with horror that if Jenk had this spell, he could probably see Clara’s location when she was on the roof. But we were surrounded by magic blooms, and hopefully she’d be lost in the background noise. Level 2 of the spell told you the school of magic sourcing the bloom. Level 3, which required a bionic upgrade, told you the specific spell that was being used.

  But for now I kept it on level one. Since he wasn’t in my line of sight and he was actively trying to hide, his player dot didn’t appear on my map, just like I hoped my dot didn’t appear on his. But I did see a faint green bloom on the roof next door. I hoped that was him, the source being his armor or guns or a spell he was preparing. Now at least I had a decent idea of his location, and I’d know if he decided to jump over here.

  Less than thirty seconds later, a crunch of gravel told me he had, indeed, decided to get a better view by jumping on the highest roof in the neighborhood. Sure enough, his green dot had moved over to this roof. This was a big building, but he was a mere twenty feet away.

  Fucking hell. I listened to him move to the edge. I slowly, deliberately pulled my gun. I was loathe to waste my once-every-24-hours Invulnerable spell. I needed to save it for tomorrow. So instead I prepared to jam down on my shield.

  “Hey,” Jenk said, and I almost jumped out of my skin. He’d seen me. Holy shit, we were fucked.

  “No, I’m here. I’m downstairs in the rig,” he said. A pause. “I’m playing DoB, prepping to run the riot. Yeah, your sister was just down here playing.” Another, longer pause. “Nadia, you two have to work it out. You are twenty years old. You’re not a little girl anymore.” Another pause. “It’s almost midnight. Peyton needs to go to bed.”

  With utter amazement, I realized I was listening to Jenk talk on his phone using his rig’s connection. And unless I was going crazy, I was pretty certain the person he was talking to—twenty-year-old Nadia—was his daughter. His daughter. Holy shit, Jenk had kids.

  I guess the revelation shouldn’t have surprised me. SmashSouth had a kid, too, I knew. Serial killers often had families that had no idea what was going on. Plus, I guess I had kind of suspected it already. Clara had said there were two women taking care of her daughter. Was one of them this Nadia? And was the
baby, this Peyton, was it Clara’s baby? But that man. He just didn’t seem the type. That brutal, savage, oddly charismatic psychopath… he seemed so normal right now. I was so thrown off by this that I momentarily forgot where I was and what I was doing.

  “Nobody is going to be open this late,” he said. “Nadia. I don’t care. Melinda works, and you don’t. You’ll have to do it. Pepperoni, cheese, it doesn’t matter. But make sure Peyton is down. Okay, I guess I won’t start my quest then…. No, it’s all right. This group isn’t up to my standards anyway…. Just call me when it gets here.”

  I’m downstairs in the rig… Your sister was just down here playing.

  It took me a moment to understand the gravity of what those two sentences meant. Unless his daughter was in on the conspiracy, which I highly doubted, then Clara and I weren’t located in Jenk’s house. He’d said three names. I said them over and over so I wouldn’t forget. Nadia, Peyton. Melinda. Nadia and Melinda were his daughters, his older daughters. The baby was Peyton.

  Clara had said the first time she woke up it was in a warehouse somewhere. I still suspected it was in Canada, and it was somewhere close to Jenk. But it was a relief to know we weren’t right there.

  Also, as awful as the kidnapping of Clara’s daughter was, it sounded like he was genuinely caring for the kid, if it was indeed Peyton. For all I knew he was as much a psychotic, abusive asshole to his children as he was to his victims here in the game, but he didn’t sound like one on the phone. He’d just handled a semi-stressful interaction with his daughter much the way I would have. He sounded like a dick, sure, but I didn’t get that power-mad abuse sense about him. I felt oddly relieved at that. I knew Clara wouldn’t see it that way. I don’t know. Maybe I was just grasping at straws.

  “We know you’re up there,” a raspy, electronic voice called from below. I knew that sound. It was the amplification of a groundling mech.

  “What the hell, man,” Jenk muttered.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  An Epsilon Holdings Ep-12 police cruiser descended from above, crash landing on the roof right next to me. The vehicle was identical to the one I’d stolen. The sundered behind the mounted gun hurled fire at Jenk as the driver leaped forward. At the same time, multiple groundling mechs landed on the rooftop, smashing down with ferocity as they power jumped from the ground.

  None of them gave me any heed as I was suddenly surrounded by a dozen screaming, shooting, and advancing elite city guards.

  The sundered behind the mounted gun flew backward, his head blown clean off. Blue liquid spewed from the wound. I pushed back around the edge of the chimney as I watched Jenk leap off the top of one of the mechs. I don’t know what he did, but the armor toppled over, falling right off the roof.

  The car bucked as Jenk leaped inside. I cowered, shrinking further back, praying he wouldn’t look down.

  And then the flying car was rising into the air. It was almost directly above me. He was doing the exact same thing I did. He was going to get away.

  “Motherfucker,” I growled. Without even thinking of the consequences, I shot my grappling hook, switching to the four grabbers with the upgraded, sticky pincers. I latched onto the bottom of the car just before it flew out of range.

  I was bodily yanked off the roof, and I scraped off the chimney as I rose into the air. As I retracted, pulling myself closer to the flying cop car, a menu popped up.

  Flash Ep-12 Cruiser?

  I mentally jammed down on Yes.

  You have gained control of this vehicle.

  My interface filled with the vehicle’s status bars and buttons just as my arm finished retracting. I dangled directly underneath the car as fire flew up from the streets at us. Jenk had decided to forgo the transport gazebo and was making a run for the city limits. He’d be there in seconds. The car would probably get shot down by the demons, but outside the city, it wouldn’t matter.

  I sighed. Damn it all to hell.

  I jammed down on Blow Core.

  Chapter 57

  Feedings Left: 4

  The next day, we approached Medina from the east on a wide road that once led to the ruins of Neo-Austin. We’d teleported out to the still-active, sideways gazebo in the ruins of Charnel. We met Banksy, who horked Nipper out of his stomach garage. It wasn’t a long drive, but this area crawled with zippers, cyclods, and the scorpion-tailed pazuzu demons who hunted in massive flocks. We also had to watch out for the hulking, two-headed dreadnoughts. The ogres were rarer, but they carried guns big enough to flip Nipper if they got a direct hit.

  According to Renault, who had been more chastened than angry about his failure the day before, Jenk had originally been given 30 days in prison for his assault on the city guard. But he attacked the arresting officer when he regenerated, which had garnered him an additional 10 days, making it so his total time behind bars would be 40 days.

  We’d either get out of here, or we’d starve to death. But either way, we would never see Jenk the lycan ever again.

  I hoped and prayed he would simply not log in for the next month, choosing to spend his evenings playing something else. Surely sitting in a jail cell would be pointless.

  “It was a bit anticlimactic,” I said as we pulled the vehicle into position.

  “You mean with Jenk?” Clara asked. She shrugged. “You hacked and blew up a flying police car as he tried to run away, all the while doing it so he couldn’t see you. The resulting explosion leveled three square blocks of the city. And you somehow managed to do it without getting arrested yourself. Anticlimactic isn’t the word I’d use.”

  I cringed, remembering the destruction. The Blow Core feature of the police cruiser was significantly more potent than I’d been expecting. I’d taken out several buildings in a human neighborhood, killing hundreds of NPCs. Not only had they pinned the destruction on Jenk, but I’d actually received a medal of commendation from the council.

  Still, the pacification of Jenk felt incomplete. It hadn’t been easy. None of this was easy. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that our good luck so far wouldn’t hold up.

  Today the plan was to break the siege.

  The closest we could get the guardians to the army surrounding the city was the forest line. That’s where they were both positioned now. They weren’t going to help in this fight unless the demons were stupid enough to flee into the forest.

  There was no way we’d be able to kill everything besieging the city. Not alone. There were at least 10,000 creatures surrounding the outskirts. So we’d had to recruit help.

  “Do you think they’ll come?” Clara asked. We parked on a hill overlooking the eastern wall of Medina. Multiple campsites littered the area below us. A black flock of demons choked the skies above the field.

  “Most of them will,” I said. “If not, this is going to be the shortest siege break attempt in history.”

  Banksy: Father, I am in position.

  Duke: Okay. Remember what I said. It’s okay to hit level 48, but don’t let yourself get close to 49. If you get halfway there, you need to use your attack, even if it’s a bit early. And if for some reason you can’t cast it, or you find yourself too close to leveling again, it’s okay to let them kill you at that point. That way you’ll lose half your progress.

  Banksy: I feel that trying to talk me into killing myself is not proper parenting.

  Duke: No, it’s probably not. Be ready for my signal.

  Banksy: Yes, father.

  ***

  Three nights earlier, I stood in the center of the council chamber while twenty-one guildmasters glared down at me. I caught Guildmaster Fiona’s eye, and she gave me a quick smile of encouragement, motioning me to go on.

  “We have the ability to clear out the demons besieging the city, but only if all 22 races work together.” My voice echoed. The round room reminded me of a college lecture hall, and I stood where the professor would normally conduct his lesson. I wondered, not for the first time, if any players had attempted this pa
th to finish the game.

  My hands itched. I wasn’t used to the fingerless gloves.

  It had taken me a solid hour to convince Fiona that my plan was a sound one. I’d had to down one of my charm potions. And only then did she grudgingly accept the idea.

  “If you really want to do this,” she’d said, “you must clear out the demons surrounding Medina. This will never work while they are on our doorstep.”

  “How the hell am I going to do that?” I had asked. I hadn’t anticipated this particular roadblock.

  “With these,” she said. She removed and handed me a pair of fingerless gloves. I examined them.

  Guildmaster’s Gloves of Magnetism

  This is a unique item!

  Imbues +15.33 Charm to Worm Surgeons Only

  “Holy cow,” I said, examining the gloves. “These are amazing! But why do I need them?”

  “Because you are a worm surgeon, and nobody takes worm surgeons at their word, especially not the Medina Council. You will need the gloves and anything else you can find to make yourself more personable to the council. We have many enemies there.”

  “But why do I need to talk to the council?” I asked.

  “Because even you, mighty Duke, cannot clear the siege on your own.”

  So when the next council meeting finally convened, I had managed to increase my charm to 38.33, making me the sexiest damn worm surgeon to ever walk this world. My base was ten, and I added 15.33 from the gloves plus another three from a skill that added the points while I was speaking to a crowd of more than three people. I managed the last ten points with yet another skill that doubled the effects of all potions, good and bad. That had been an expensive one, costing fifteen skill points. I downed the charm potion before walking into the chamber.

  That peculiar fraction at the end of the glove stats was suspicious. No other items in the game I had seen so far ever imparted fractional points. It felt like more than just a bug.

  Sometimes while flipping through the portfolios of other artists, I’d look at something, and I’d just know that it was a fake. It was art that been made by an AI, not a human. There was nothing specific that gave it away. AI was good at being raw, gritty, not perfect. But I sometimes got a feeling, a sixth sense that detected the soullessness of the piece.