Irrelevant Jack 5

by Prax Venter

  Instead of opening the door to whatever might be waiting for them on the other side, Jack dashed across the room and stabbed ARV Alternis through the plaster wall. After forcing it around a little, he pulled it out and looked through the peephole onto a piano lounge massacre.

  A visually off-putting tear in space hovered in the middle of the upturned tables and cast strange magical light over the ridiculous amount of gore. At the far end by a pair of red double doors, two men in riot gear fought back a sleek robot while a second made short work of the strange animal-people wearing fancy suits and dresses. A flash from the wrong light spewing from the portal preceded a third future-bot hopping through onto one knee amid the screaming and wreckage. It snapped its glowing white eyes on an elderly owl woman hobbling out of view and Jack had seen enough.

  “Belda,” he shouted with force, “Shield rush a path through this wall. I’d rather pick a side during a battle already in progress. Try not to hit anything that isn’t a robot.”

  The 8-foot fighter turned to look at the others before another horrifying scream from the other side got her moving.

  With a loud, “Ha!” Belda smashed straight through the thin plaster wall and ended up out on the stage behind a flipped piano.

  Jack leapt through the hole she made and immediately synergized a Double Omni Strike across all visible Targets.

  Timewalker Droid -225 | HP 1,275/1,500

  .. 1,050/1,500

  .. x2

  Timewalker Breach -225 | HP 275/500

  .. 50/500

  With a grin splitting his lips from his hunch about the portal, Jack pointed at it and yelled, “Yatts!”

  While the Light Mage closed the breach with a quick Searing Beam, Sevik zipped into the smooth-armored bot rising from the motionless owl woman with a Wind Strike as Alt circle-strafed with his dual eye-beams.

  Timewalker Droid -297 | HP 753/1,500

  Timewalker Droid -450 | HP 303/1,500

  The invading robot vented some trapped heat in its body as it danced around the Lancer and kicked their stocky healer in the face with alarming speed and grace.

  Yatts -250 | HP 509/759

  Jack was closest and engaged his own stacked speed boost to bring it down with a trusty Double Strike.

  Timewalker Droid -279 | HP 24/1,500

  Timewalker Droid -279 | Defeated

  By now one of the riot gear humans was dead and the remaining two ninja Droids had turned to focus on their surprise attack. That’s when Belda Charged and Shouted at the same time.

  “Yah!” the big woman bellowed while sprinting forward. The ship righted itself under their feet and the even terrain only increased the charging Fighter’s speed. Her unavoidable slab of metal connected with one of the sturdy foes, sending it hurtling through a row of bottles behind a bar on the far side of the lounge. The other would have taken the opening even if it weren’t affected by the Shout, and Jack winced as it punched her exposed side three times like a jackhammer with its own version of a multi-strike ability.

  Belda -230 | HP 1,734/1,964

  Belda Critical! -349 | HP 1,385/1,964

  Belda -230 | HP 1,155/1,964

  Jack left the experienced shield-user to get her single target under control as he added his Mining Laser to attacks from Alt, Sevik, and Yatts and all four of them combined obliterated the Droid hopping back over the bar as it attempted to rejoin the fight.

  When he looked back at their Fighter, he saw the futurist bot vent more heat from its chest as it dodged her overhead mace swing and slammed its compact metal fist into her face.

  Belda -230 | HP 925/1,964

  Its speed boosts were ineffective against a group of five, however, and Jack’s full party annihilated the final attacker.

  “Are you people okay?” Jack asked the three survivors while Yatts healed his wife. The riot gear fellow with a plexiglas shield and face mask, a half fish woman in a tight red dress and a glowing ‘lure’ sticking out from her forehead, and a young, blue-skinned young man wearing a red bellhop outfit.

  The angler-fish-woman crossed her iridescent scaled arms. “First the murder this afternoon, and now time breaches? Good that Heroes have finally arrived.” She turned to face the armored man staring down at his dead partner. “And you call yourself security.”

  That got his attention. “Enough,” the gruff man said, holstering his baton. “I need to secure the bridge you should all-” He paused to swallow. “All of you should stay here.”

  “The bridge?” Jack said. “Are we on a boat?”

  The bellhop stepped forward at this. “You stand on the Gilded Breeze, the premier luxury skyliner of Saline Dunes. A-and I’m going to need to see all of your tickets.”

  “Oh, sweet morsel,” the fish-woman said, and the blue bellhop immediately locked his wide eyes on her bioluminescent lure. “I’m sure we can find some non-bloody stubs around here. These patrons won’t be needing them.”

  Jack tried to blink away how real these Tower entities felt and focused on what they were ‘meant’ to do on this Floor.

  “You,” he said, pointing to the only surviving security guard. “What’s your name?”

  Jack noticed Sevik shift uncomfortably in his armor, and if he’d learned anything from his time with the man, this was not impatience. Like everyone else in Subroutine Sana, the Angelshade Heroes had never bothered to speak with anything encountered in the Tower.

  “My name?” The guy looked confused. “Uh, Guard 005- but none of this matters! People are dying!”

  At that, the lightly armored security guard turned and kicked open the double doors out of the lounge. Beyond the doors was a more industrial-style hallway compared to what they’d seen so far. It didn’t go far before ending in a wide set of stairs leading up into the night.

  “Let’s move,” Jack called out to his team as he followed Guard 005 up the stairs. “And don’t attack anything that doesn’t attack you first.”

  Yatts pumped his shorter legs swiftly to keep up. “This is highly unusual, but I feel…”

  The Light Mage never finished his thought as the whole party reached the deck of the Gilded Breeze. Not only did they come face to face with another battle, but now they were all standing on a fantasy airship under an impossibly star-splattered sky.

  Ahead of them were three more men in riot gear standing off with two more Timewalker Droids and another wrong-colored breach in virtual reality.

  “Ranged, take the breach!” Jack shouted as Belda continued trundling past the magic portal with a deep laughter, and he watched her remove one of the sleek bots from the battle with another homerun shield bash. It made pathetic beeping digital noises as it soared over the short railing that ran around the deck and vanished into the darkness below.

  The portal and single remaining Timewalker Droid fell quickly with the combined focus of both Jack’s party and now four guards.

  “You okay, Captain?” a man yelled down from the central structure that served as the airship’s bridge. With the immediate threats handled, Jack could finally focus on the cluster of propellers stabbing up from the deck behind the bridge. He tried to take as many notes as he could about air ships, but either Alt’s skepticism or his own brain came back with the concept that what he was seeing was fantasy. But a personal gyrocopter like he’d seen in that spy movie?

  “We’re still alive,” called back one of the men dressed in riot gear. He pulled off the helmet to reveal a stern face with prominent lion features. Movement pulled Jack’s eyes to the half-fish woman sashaying past to stand close to the intimidating captain creature. The blue bellhop tried to follow but saw her body language, and his shoulders slumped as he moved to the back.

  “Heroes,” the lion captain of the Gilded Breeze began with his chest thrust outward. “Thanks be to you for doing what you could. Although there are few standing here, that there are any left alive is better than I’d dared to hope.” He paused and held up a single finger. “However, the murderer is still aboard. They a
re using the Pendulum amulet stolen from the Timewalker alien corpse to pull Droids from the future. You must identify and neutralize the murderer, or we are, all of us, doomed.”

  The angler-fish woman slunk up against the captain and draped her scaled hand on his chest as she spoke to Jack’s party in a sultry voice.

  “And don’t you pick wrong, sweetums. She Who Judges will take your tongues and an eye from each for saying lies.”

  The captain gently pulled her hand away from his body. “Hold, Singer. You, the servant staff, and even you, 005, must remain on this deck. I know the crew in the cabin were with me this late morning. The murderer could be anyone.”

  With that said, the lion-faced man turned and walked toward the small set of stairs leading up to the glass-wrapped bridge. The Singer pouted, and the Bellhop brightened as he moved close to stare at her again while the trusted security guards moved to cover the entrance with an aggressive stance.

  “Utterly unbelievable,” Yatts said, blinking at the lower-level NPCs in front of him. “It’s as if we’re watching a performance- inside the Tower.”

  The fish-woman let out a noise of disgust. “You juuust missed my performance, magic man. Uggh, I do not want to go through the hassle of finding a replacement pianist.”

  “So- wait.” Jack held up his palms. “We’re looking for a murderer who stole a magic time-warping amulet? This is a murder mystery layout?”

  “And Haylee’s not here,” Alt said with a sideways glance.

  “Oh, wow, yeah,” Jack said with a slight cringe. “Hopefully we get a good wacky 50 every time we hit it.”

  “We would have killed everything,” Sevik said from behind his mask. “And we assuredly would not have carved our own door at the start.”

  “Yet doing so saved these ones,” Belda said. “If we did our normal careful route, all these… temporary creatures would be dead, and the breaches would be harder to close.”

  “Mmm,” Yatts said patting her leather-clad back. “I’m also watching you abuse the spaces of the environment with your physical strength. You’re orchestrating the tide of battle and you’re magnificent, my dear. Simply magnificent.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said as he leaned over the railing to see what became of the bot she blasted overboard- he wasn’t terribly surprised to see an infinite void of nothing. “Anyway…” he began as he moved away from the railing and tried to wrap his head around what the Tower was throwing at them. “This um, layout is kind of new for me too, but these guys sure are talkative.”

  “Do any of them have a Negative Mark?” Sevik said with a shrug. “I know we can only get them in Town, but maybe this is their Town of sorts.”

  Jack gave him a semi-impressed frown and then moved to inspect the trio of characters before him. The blue-hued bellhop was still trying not to be caught staring at the fish woman, the fish woman was staring straight at Jack as he approached, and the guy named 005 sighed and moved away to lean over the railing.

  “Not getting a system message from them,” Jack said. “I used to love these old point and click adventures… erm- never mind. You, Singer,” he said, and she raised her brows in disdain. “Where were you during the murder?”

  She rolled her big fish eyes. “Singing.”

  Jack nodded. “And you,” he asked the bellhop.

  “Room service. I was catering to M-mister Miser in his room ac-cross the hall when she screamed.”

  “And I was watching her sing,” the security guard said unprompted out into the void. “No one here did it. The kid’s too busy, the Singer was singing, and I was guarding.”

  “Who’s this Mister Miser?” Jack asked.

  “He’s a guest.” The bellhop shrugged. “Room 4.”

  “This Timewalker person was murdered in her room? Which one?”

  “Room 3. We left it… her as she was until we were to reach port in the morning. Here is a staff stone that will get you into the room.”

  The young blue man produced the item from his pocket and pressed the smooth gray stone into Jack’s palm. He inspected it.

  Gilded Breeze Staff Stone - [Artifact | Value: 3000]

  “Are any other people unaccounted for on this vessel?” Sevik asked and Jack moved the stone into his inventory. He was glad to see the Lancer embracing whatever game this Floor wanted them to play.

  “Maybe,” the fish woman answered. “That’s your job now, isn’t it?”

  Jack gave her a nod. “We’re going to have a look around for other survivors and/or suspects then. You three stay here.”

  “Yes, sir,” 005 said with only a hint of sarcasm.

  Jack gathered his team with a look and moved back to the stairs back down into the gore-covered belly of the airship.

  The piano lounge still looked as if it’d taken a few pulses in the blender, and he caught sight of the glowing Exit Orb in their room as they moved.

  “Yeah, I don’t know if we were meant to get in here so fast,” he said, “but there sure is a lot of dialogue built in for us about this murder puzzle if we did.”

  “I wonder what she meant by ‘take our tongues’,” Belda said with a gloved hand raised to protect her throat. “I could do without that image filling my imagination.”

  Jack nodded to another set of blue double doors straight ahead. “We should sweep the ship and see what we find. I’m not sure what would happen if we simply started killing everyone, but let’s at least see if we can figure out who to accuse of this murder. The first place we want to check out is the crime scene.”

  After gathering around the door, their Fighter slammed her fur-covered boot through the middle and kicked them to splinters. Beyond was a wide hallway of doors on the other side and a single ninja droid silently running for them from the far end.

  “One,” Belda called out as she stepped back and let it come to them. Jack smiled as his team wordlessly got into position to abuse the space they had in the wrecked lounge to surround it. The sleek Timewalker Droid’s tapered metal feet tore rips in the ornate red carpeting as it dashed in front of them, but with all five striking in unison with lance, mace, beams, and rays, the Monster vanished in a swirl of static.

  “Here are the rooms,” Jack said as he stepped into the hallway. There were four doors on each side numbered 1-4 and a fifth door at the end of the hall.

  Sevik opened the first door on the right labeled with a number 1 and gave them easy access to the Exit Orb where they started, then they all moved down the richly decorated hall to the final door on the left.

  Jack tried the knob first, but found it locked, so he pulled out the stone and held it close. The smooth rock in his hand flashed green as he heard a click from within the door and then it faded back to gray. With a shrug he banished the key to his Inventory and opened the door.

  The interior was mostly identical to their room except for the thin bald woman in a bloodstained white dress lying face down on her bed. As Jack slowly stepped into the room, he noticed the top half of a butcher’s knife protruding from the center of her back. Everything around that point was a stark red against the pure white of her dress.

  “Is she truly dead?” Yatts said and Jack shot him a look of confusion.

  Alt answered. “In the world Jack and I come from, people do not vanish at the end of their life. I’d view this cadaver as more of a prop than anything else.”

  “How tragic,” Belda said. “To see your loved ones… lingering.”

  - 14 -

  “It smells of rot,” Sevik said, staying well outside the murdered woman’s room.

  Jack tried to ignore them all as he told himself he was ‘looking for clues’, but he didn’t really know what he was doing. There wasn’t much to find, so he made a note of the murder weapon and the current list of suspects, then turned to leave but stopped when he saw something black on the wooden floorboards near the bed. Angry Sun Alt moved in close as well and the light helped them both see.

  “I’m 96% sure that is a small amount of chocolate cake,�
� the AI said out loud as he shifted his halfmoon eyes up.

  Jack held up a finger. “The plot thickens!”

  “What is happening now?” Belda asked, squatting down and nudging Jack out of the way with her huge knee.

  “It’s a clue,” Alt said. “The room was unchanged since the time of the murder, and these crumbs might mean nothing, but you never know what might help us narrow down the suspects later.”

  “Let’s check the other rooms,” Jack said, stepping out and approaching door number 4 across the hall. He listened first but only heard silence, so he knocked. “Anyone alive in there?”

  A muffled male voice came back. “Currently!”

  Jack waved the stone in front of the knob, and it flashed green again.

  “Mister Miser?” he said, opening the door and stepping inside.

  Sitting on the bed this time was an exceedingly round, bright-red devil man, complete with horns and mustache and goatee. All around him were stacks of plates of half-eaten food.

  “Who are you?” he said, his long nose held high. “I gave you no leave to break down my door.”

  “We’re here to solve the murder,” Belda said, stepping beside Jack and crossing her arms.

  The devil man sputtered. “Are you accusing me?”

  Jack waved his hands. “No, no, no. No one is accusing you yet. We just want to ask a few questions.”

  The big Fighter pointed at a mostly whole, frosted chocolate cake with a fork still jammed in where Mister Miser must have dug out the middle.

  “Then how do you explain that!” she said, triumphantly.

  The guest in room 4 turned his yellow eyes to that one of over fifty filthy dishes around him and grunted.

  “I’d like an explanation myself. That hack chef used Horse Serpent eggs instead of Naga eggs- Says the Security like it that way. A blight on my palate and waste of my currency.”

  Jack cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention, then started his own line of questions.

  “Where were you when the woman across the hall screamed?”

  “Here.”