by Vic Connor
It’s impossible to distinguish the mask’s features in the twilight, but I can feel the onyx beads behind the eye-slits fixed on us.
I crunch the rest of the stone-like biscuit while I massage my sore shoulders.
“Road long,” Miyu’s voice intones.
“Long indeed,” I reply.
“Yet ya kept pace, me lad,” Abe says. Crunches. “Slow but steady. An’ without yappin’ an’ beggin’ fer us’n t’ stop t’ catch our breath every other step!” He crunches some more.
“I’m getting used to it, I guess, and so are my sore muscles,” I say…
Strength Increased!
…“and we can’t afford my crippled ass being a dead weight, dragging you guys down,” I add. “Not when we have no time to waste. Not when our lost friend is in peril.”
Resolve Increased!
Abe nods gravely. “Well said, me lad. And find our lil’ angel we will, by death and damnation. No matter how many o’ thems Pope-kissin’ Spaniards be standin’ in our way. No matter how well-armed thems be.” He smirks as he casts a quick glance at my hat, lying by my side with its puffy ostrich plume standing straight and proud.” Nor how fancy theirn garments, as sure as I be a soul.”
“By the way, Abe me mate… What were ye drinkin’, when we were facing the Spaniards?”
The pirate smirks. “Ya got that big friend o’ yours, watchin’ yarr stern.” He eyes the pistolón on my knees. “Well.” Reaching behind his back, he pulls out a large, fat bottle with a thin neck from his rucksack. “Ol’ Abe be havin’ a good friend too.”
He handles it to me. “Ya can take a sniff,” he warns, “but better not be drinkin’ it, by God. Unless ya wants t’ wake up in the morrow with a hangover like all o’ Beelzebub’s screamin’ demons be trapped inside yarr skull.”
With careful fingers, I uncork the bottle and take a tiny whiff.
“Hoooly mother…” I shudder, eyes full of tears. “What the hell is this!?”
Miyu’s crystalline giggle dances softly in the night, left fingers raised to mute her mask.
Abe grabs the bottle back from my hands. “Hell bein’ a good description fer it, aye?” He takes a quick sip.
“Abe, mate … that stuff could melt iron bars, me friend. What is it?”
“Rokovoko Rum,” he says. “Pirate-king of ‘em pirate brews.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but… How it be tastin’?”
“Like havin’ a whole tribe o’ tiny cannibals trapped insides yarr belly.” He belches like a tenor toad. Miyu giggles again, like it was the funniest joke ever told. “An’ all o’ them hungry, ‘em tiny cannibals, an’ gnawing at yarr guts from t’ inside.”
“That doesn’t sound pleasant, ol’ mate.”
He looks at me. “It ain’t. It ain’t pleasant at all.” There’s a sad, heavy sorrow in his eyes, but maybe it’s just the darkness that surrounds us. “But it be dullin’ yarr senses, and be drownin’ other pains, so thems other pains feels jus’ like itches and prickles.”
Ah. That makes sense… “A painkiller,” I confirm.
He claps me on the back. “Ya got a ways with ‘em words, me lad. Aye. If pain be a fat penguin or a seal, Rokovoko Rum be a killer whale.”
“So, you drink before getting into a fight?”
He takes another small sip. “Always before pain be a-knockin’ at Ol’ Abe’s door, like an’ ol’ friend payin’ ya a visit,” he replies. He corks up the bottle, tosses it up in the air for a half-flip, catches it by its thin neck, and simulates hitting something with the bottle’s fat body as if it was a mace or mallet. “Also good fer dishin’ pain yarrself, me bottle, an’ fer crackin’ some skulls in a pinch.”
The bottle disappears behind him, going back somewhere inside his rucksack. He scratches his temple, covered by the dirty, yellowish-orange bandana wrapped around his head. “As sure as God sees me, lad—” he nods toward the pistolón laying on my lap “—when it be time fer dishin’ pain upon ‘em foes, yarr tools ain’t so bad.”
“Shot good,” Miyu whispers.
“Real good, aye.” Abe nods. “Ya be deliverin’ fair punishment on t’ foul priest, lad. Ya righteously did.”
Skill Upgraded!
Crippling Shot:
Promising Apprentice
“That was…” I pause for a heartbeat, searching for words.
“Good,” Miyu’s whisper finishes.
“’Twas well done,” Abe agrees. “An’ well deserved.”
I raise the pistolón, my arm straight and stiff as I aim into the dark jungle. “That trick may come in handy for capturing some of our foes alive…”
“An’ why in hell would we be doin’ that fer, me lad? Thems want us’n dead, ya knows?”
“Aye, Abe me mate. But we wants information, aye? If we capture some of them, then we can question them, and we be gathering useful knowledge. And fer ‘em scurvy dogs to talk to us, we need to keeps ‘em alive, ye follows? Dead men tell no tales, as I bet ye knows.”
He scratches his right temple again, over his dirty bandana. “Aye, lad.” He nods somberly. “Ol’ Abe knows all too well—”
Memory Unlocked…
Failed!
“—that ‘em dead be tellin’ no stories,” he says.
Miyu’s soft hiss cuts the air. “Dead good.”
I glance at Miyu’s naginata, which leans against the tree trunk to her side. “That seems to be a useful tool for preventing otherwise talkative folks from telling their tales, I suppose…”
The Noh mask leans backward.
“That tool o’ hers, it be cuttin’ ‘em strong folks in half,” Abe confirms, looking at the naginata’s blade, “an’ everythin’ else in its path. Round an’ round an’ round she be swirlin’ it while she spins. Round an’ round mowin’ thems foes like grass. Sometimes, it’s enough to kill ‘em all, if foes be weak. But when thems foes are tough—” He makes a thrusting motion with his right hand, fingers extended stiff “—our lance lady stops a-spinnin’, and she be lungin’ her blade straight at ‘em, arrow-like, and she be goin’ fer thems necks when she does.”
The Noh mask rocks back and forth, following Miyu’s nods. She presses her index and middle finger below the mask’s chin, placing them upon her throat.
“Tsuki,” she says.
“I’m certain your weapon is a naginata—”
The Noh mask nods.
“—so, I guess it comes from the Japanese Shogunate, in the Far East. The land of the Rising Sun.”
The mask nods again.
“Yet Juanita called you ‘sunset warrior’ and ‘sunset woman.’ Why is that?”
The mask slowly pivots toward Abe.
The pirate glances down at Miyu’s hands, as if making certain the samurai won’t produce a sharp blade should he mention her past. In the darkness engulfing us, Miyu’s onyx-black eyes could as well be closed, for all I can see. Her fingers rest peacefully in her lap, looking harmless and non-threatening…
“God Almighty made t’ world round like ‘em apples, ya see?” Abe raises both hands as though holding a small ball between them. “Fer ‘em Aztecs pagans, Europe be to the east. But on t’ other side of the Aztec lands, if ya keeps goin’ west, ya have this other big, big sea…”
“The Pacific,” I clarify.
“Aye. If ya keeps yarr bow a-pointin’ due west, ya reach t’ Land of the Great Khans.” He points his thumb toward Miyu. “Where ‘em folks be all like ‘er, an’ their eyes be like ‘em was slit with a dagger.”
“Aye,” I say, “if you sail all the way across the Pacific, you get to China, Japan, and all the Far East.”
“Well, since our lance lady came ‘ere sailin’ from the west, t’ witch calls her ‘sunset woman.’ Folks brighter than ya haf had their head spinnin’ with east bein’ west fer them Aztecs, but there you go, lad.”
“Heh. Them Aztec thinks themselves as the center of the world, eh?”
“Aye, thems does,” Abe grins. “An’ ‘em I
ncas ways south, ‘em thinks t’ same too. An’ so do we Englishmen. Same with ‘em Frenchmen, an’ thems Spaniards, an’ the Pope in Rome, and the Great Khans who rules over ‘em yellow-skinned folks, thems all thinks t’ same. Big difference bein’—” He jabs a thumb to his chest “—only we Londoners happen t’ be right.”
“You haven’t seen New York, my friend.”
“Aye, true that.” He leans back against the tree trunk. “But Ol’ Abe has seen the ol’ York proper.” His eyes close gently. “An’ ol’ York, me lad, that cowshed ain’t the center o’ the world, as sure as I sit ‘ere. So yarr new York cannae be, either.”
Silence creeps into our midst as Abe goes to sleep. A moment later, the pirate’s snores break the peace.
“Damn.” I chuckle. “They can probably hear him all the way to Villarica…”
The jungle is dead quiet, save for Abe’s snoring. The dusk’s twilight gives way to a silvery glow as the shining moon rises, darting its white rays throughout the foliage and tree tops.
Juanita must have reached the Spanish town by now. No other choice but to wait…
Miyu’s whisper startles me. “Jake.”
She extends her hand to me, then raises her right forearm parallel to the ground before her face and places the mask’s cheek against it, as if her arm were a pillow. She straightens up again.
“All right,” I say, making myself as comfortable as possible on the ground. “Good night, you silent sunset from the Far East.”
She utters something halfway between a hiss and a giggle.
I close my eyes. I don’t feel tired, though. And how does it even work in-game, falling asleep?
There’s the pleasant feeling of being engulfed by a warm, soft sponge while sinking downward…
…a mild tingling sensation behind my eyelids…
“It’s that how it works?” I asked. “Just close your eyes, fall asleep … blam, Lobby time?”
Sveta smiled and nodded from the other side of the huge boardroom desk.
I looked at the desk’s bird’s-eye view of our trio: Abe and I fast asleep, Miyu kneeling and alert as she scans the dark forest around us. “It makes sense to jump out while asleep, I have to agree. And I guess I’ll be able to skip time if I want to?”
“Indeed,” she confirmed. “When you return to your avatar, the game time will jump forward to whatever time your avatar wakes up.” She glanced at the seven-foot-tall vault door behind my hover chair. “Mind you, time skipping won’t work when you jump into Multiplayer, since day-night cycles need to be the same for all players.”
“If I reach multiplayer…”
“Aw c’mon, boss!” She beamed. “I believe in you! Therefore, with your permission: when.”
“What would I do without you, Svetty dear?”
“You’d find another assistant in a heartbeat, and forget about me in the next.” She fake-pouted. “I bet you’d go for a green-eyed, freckled redhead this time. Oh, yes, sir. I’m keenly aware of your infatuation with that Sally O’Brian actress.”
I buried my head in my hands, laughing. “Is there anything about me you don’t know, my keenly aware Svetty?”
“I don’t know how long it’ll take you, boss,” she teased. “But I know it’s not if but when you open that big, mean vault door.”
I looked behind me, studying the stainless-steel monstrosity guarding the exit to Multiplayer. Not a subtle metaphor.
“Eyes on the ball,” I said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” I brought up my avatar’s screens, scanned through them, and opened the Skills tab. “Here we go: Crippling Shot. I think this one has potential.” The skill took 2 seconds to aim, plus the time needed to draw. And I had +20% to my hit power if my target was fighting one of my allies. “It shatters a limb on a successful hit,” I read from the tooltips. “A normal hit; no Crit needed.”
“Why not aim at the head, though?” Sveta asked. “Kill them straight?”
“Didn’t you hear what I told Abe?”
“Do you really want to take prisoners, boss?”
“Worth a try, if the fight looks winnable. There doesn’t seem to be an upside to killing them all, is there? From what I’ve seen, we get VPs for defeating the whole squad, not for each individual kill.”
“Dead men tell no tales…” she said, unconvinced.
“Isn’t this exactly my point? We need them alive if we want to extract some info from them. Assuming that’s even possible, but we won’t find out unless we try.”
“What about after they share their tales with you, and you gather the intel you’re looking for? Do you let them go, so they can keep telling tales? Like, say, where your party can be found?”
“Hmm. I hear you…”
“I guess you can execute them in cold blood after you interrogate them, so they don’t tell tales about you, but…”
I leaned back, looking at the ceiling. “That’s the thing, right? The ‘but’ part you’ve just mentioned… Like, I don’t have a clue how many mobs I’ve killed in games, but must be, I don’t know, hundreds of thousands? Maybe millions? And who cares, really, because they are just mobs in a computer game, right? But this being so real, in those two fights I’ve been through…”
She smiled thoughtfully. “They are realistic, aren’t they?”
I nodded. “Your friend Maneesh and his team deserve to feel like the proudest bunch on Earth. I can only speak for myself, but I think Istoria will rock it hard when released. It doesn’t just feel real; it is frigging real.”
She took out her pen and paper notepad. “Can I quote you on that, boss? I’m sure Marketing would love that as a catchphrase.”
“Do so, Svetty dear.” I went back to my Skills screen. “After properly discussing the matter of royalties.” Point Blank and Quick Draw hadn’t changed, which made sense since I hadn’t used them during the fight with Lieutenant Escobar and the dark Priest. “But it’s true; I have to confess that things being so real makes my hands shake a little when I consider killing worthy opponents like the Spanish lieutenant. Doubly so, if we had to do it in cold blood.”
Unflinching Calm was described as a “stance.” There would be others, according to the tooltip, but since it was currently the only stance I had access to, it was a no brainer to always choose it: +15% Accuracy, +5% to Critical Hits, +10% Range.
“I need two seconds to adopt the Unflinching Calm stance,” I read, “but I have to abandon it if I want to Quick Draw. I’m disliking that Quick Draw thing more and more, I think.”
“It sounds wise to take your time to do things right, boss. No point in doing it quickly if you’ll do it wrong. As Napoleon would say to his butler: Dress me slowly, for I am in a hurry.”
“I wasn’t expecting to find rabid Napoleon fans over in Moscow.” I winked.
She chuckled. “Maybe he dressed too slowly, last time he paid us a visit? Our winters are harsh, and if they catch you with your pants down…”
I laughed. “Yeah, so I’ve heard. But I think it’s actually a Spanish saying, and at least a century older than Napoleon.”
“All the more poetically ironic for you to use it against your Spanish foes, no?”
I rubbed my hands together. “So, that’s the play, then: I get into the Unflinching Calm stance as Miyu and Abe hold the line, and then I Cripple-shoot or Point-blank depending how far our enemies are. With luck, we’ll have a survivor or two to question after the fight. Seems simple and straightforward.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I guess…” I replied. “I mean, things will get more complex as I build my toon and expand its skill tree, but at first, you never have more than a couple of choices. If I ever get to choose from ten different stances and six different guns, then things will get really confusing. But for now, I’m not complaining.”
“You know what my Razor character says about choices, right?”
“An’ I’m afraid she be right ‘bout that, yer sharp Razor friend,” I rumbled. I l
ooked down at my sleeping avatar. “Anyway, let’s be givin’ this strat a try.”
“Go kick some Spanish butt, Octogun Jake,” she said. “Oh, and by the way—cool hat!”
A huge pair of hands rock my shoulders, pulling me out of my slumber.
“Rise an’ shine, sailor,” Abe grunts. “Sunrise be soon upon us.”
A grayish pre-dawn light spreads through the jungle. Birds chirp, hidden in the foliage. I sit up and look around. Abe crouches by my side; Miyu, her back turned to us, stands still a few paces away, keeping a vigilant eye on the path to Villarica.
“She hasn’t returned yet, has she?”
“Nay,” Abe confirms. “Still early, though.”
“How long before we worry?”
“By mid-mornin’, lad. An’ if it be noon without the witch returnin’, we should be fearin’ t’ worse.”
Miyu joins us, walking with noiseless steps save the faint rustling of her silks. Somehow, her feet know how not to break a single twig, nor ruffle a single leaf.
“Nothing?” I ask.
The mask swings from left to right.
Abe helps me to stand up. With nothing better to do, I spend some time rearranging my growing arsenal. Two common pistols, one on each hip, which I can Quick Draw if I get rushed by a charging foe. Two more pistols, one on each thigh; I think I can Quick Draw the one on the right if I need to, but the one on the left thigh is awkward to reach with my right hand. Then, three common pistols attached to my left crutch. I’d use these for Crippling Shots whenever I have the time and opportunity to aim carefully. And my new friend, the Spanish pistolón, hanging heavily from the belt at my back.
“Ya’ll need ages t’ pull out that one, lad,” Abe observes. “Gun bein’ so big an’ so heavy. An’, besides, looks like that gun wants t’ be fired at close range, don’t ya thinks?”
“Well, y’know, Abe ol’ friend… I’ve been doing some thinkin’, and I’m thinking we may need a wee bit more strategy for our fights. Miyu and you rushin’ at them foes may not be the best way to kick ‘em scurvy dogs’ butts, ye follows?”