by Yuli Ban
“Alex? Alex! Alex!” Maria shouted, but the doppler effect kicked in and I left her in my dust. Damn, that bike could go so fast. I was Superman.
Get Your Kill On…
Some Nazis sat on their bikes up ahead, and when they saw me coming, they prepared themselves. However, I was too fast for them and they had to deal with the girls instead. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Maria aim a Gatling gun and unleash a leadstorm. The Nazis got mowed down. But right when I thought I was in the clear, some huge buff wizard matched my speed and wiggled his fingers like he was in Naruto.
“Whatchu lookin’ at, brotherfucker?” I exploded and I blasted an entire clip into his face. Whatever magic he tried to do blew up on him too, so that was nice. All I wanted were more dead elves and dead Nazis. Especially Nazi elves.
God fucking damn do I fucking hate fucking elves.
His motorcycle spun out of control and crashed into a streetlight, throwing the burnt corpse away. Oh, that sweet billow of smoke! Fire licked that filthy elf body, incinerating it protein by protein until only the bones remained. And those bones would eventually be consumed by the desert itself, forever denying another elf the right to stink up the world.
Right up ahead, there was a highway sign:
“YANCY3 MILES”
Across the desertscape, I could even see Yancy’s rooftops and signs. Looked like any old town, but that was thanks to the “WickDonalds” arches—were they even trying? Actually, when I saw the highway sign, I stopped mentally blocking out the helmet’s HUD and noticed that there was a waypoint directing my attention to the right. The numbers decreased rapidly, going from 2,000 to 1,000 in a few seconds. That could only mean that the nasty ranch house up ahead was supposed to be Scumlord’s place.
Right behind me were Ana and Maria, and Maria shouted something I didn’t pay much attention to. At that point, my head was a total haze of delirium, adrenaline, rage, hysteria, and depression wrapped up in a bow of vengeance. I threw myself off my bike and let it slide into a mound of sand so I could have a sprinting head-start. Some Nazi stood guard outside, but I clotheslined his head off and continued to beat him down.
However, the next thing I knew, Maria grabbed me by the shoulders, twisted me around, and kissed me right on the lips.
WHAT.
Now she was a hot girl, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not some sort of pervert who only cares about sex. At least, I wasn’t at that moment in time. All I wanted to do was kill some Nat-zees. So I pushed her away and said, “What the hell? What’s wrong with you?”
She said, “You disobeyed me, little man.” Her eyes looked like hearts and she rested her fingers by her lips. “I don’t like being disobeyed. And you must be punished.”
Ana skipped ahead and pat my head. “That’s Maria’s kink.”
I gawked at both of them. Those eyes were amorous. “Oh no. No no no no no no. Not right now. I thought we were supposed to be shooting up this Scumlord fellow and saving some girls— who are definitely not joining a harem.”
She strutted past me, shaking it as she went. “We are, don’t fret, little man. I just felt that I needed to make the hierarchy clear.”
“‘We are’ what? What did you mean by that? Subject pronoun agreement failed there. Explain yourself. Hey, hey! I’m talking to you!”
Ana’s face dropped ever so slightly. She had this pouty face that made her lips look even bigger, but cats don’t really have lips so it looked like she was sticking out her chin. “But where am I on the totem pole?”
“The bottom, as usual,” Maria said, giving her the side-eye. Ana drooped her head and dragged her portable WMD, kicking up earth and pulling out weeds. As she neared one of the windows, she pulled out a stielhandgranate and lobbed it through the glass. Nazis flew out like fireworks. Then Maria turned to me and said, “You mentioned back on the road that the Hurricanes were responsible for killing your loved ones, yes?”
Wiping away the last bit of her spittle, I scowled as the memory of my friend’s face flashed before my eyes. “Only my friend. They took my sister. But that’s a fate worse than death.”
“I see…” Maria beat her hand into her palm. “They perfected their terrorism.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Hurricane Corporation likes to ‘disappear’ people who cross them.
“That right, huh?” And that made me even angrier. The depression from earlier started lifting bit by bit as I thought about this opportunity I had. Sure, it wasn’t the real thing, but it felt real enough. How sick it made me feel— to think they practiced their methods on NPCs like those two distressed damsels and probably even other Players, and then they’d pull the same thing on my sister. In fact, that brought a new question to my lips.
As we swaggered over to the entrance of the house, Maria handed me a shotgun and pulled out— not even the katana— a crescent sword. I wasn’t going to ask why because I first said, “What do they do with people they take?”
She licked the blade and look at her reflection and said, “They send them to processing camps way out in the desert. Hell only knows what happens to them there.”
I cringed, not only because of how edgy that sounded but also because I could only imagine the horrors being brought unto my sister. Processing camps? What could possibly go on there? Knowing Nazis, nothing good at all.
Ana jumped in front of me and said, “We raid them sometimes to free the prisoners. There’s usually some good loot to be found because the Hurricane Corp takes their stuff.”
We walked onto the porch. “You got any plans on taking them down?”
Ana and Maria said at the same time, “Yeah.” And they turned to me. “You.”
The door exploded as a well-oiled juggernaut walked out carrying a grenade launcher. He spouted some gibberish that may have been German or Dutch but I didn’t care enough about his life to find out. We had all ducked out of the way.
I turned to Ana, “Why did you even bring that?”
She grinned and said, “You’ll see!”
Maria hopped out of covered and cartwheeled over to the juggernaut. Literally nothing was concealed since her skirt was as long as a quark. Then she swiped upwards and chopped him in half, dick-first. All the bloody giblets fell out.
Ana pat my shoulder and said, “You follow her. I’ll be waiting out here for the zeppelin.”
“Zeppelin?!” I looked around the side of the house, but there was nothing but pure desert evening. “What zeppelin?”
She fell onto her back and set down a tripod to keep the nuclear launcher steady. I wonder to this day if she deliberately faced her ass towards me. My eyes glued to the folds and cleavage for a few seconds before I forced myself up. I pumped the shotgun— wasting a perfectly good slug. I picked that slug back up and went into the house, seeing a trail of carnage and pandemonium from where Maria had sliced and diced more Nazi bikers.
She ran across a hallway and looked right at me to say, "You'd better get in here before I take all the experience points!"
I ran in, "Why do I even need those? Why do you even need those? I can kill these stupid guys just as easily when I first started this game as I can now."
She said, "Trust me, you're getting better. A lot better. In fact, you are..." She stopped, lifted a finger, and looked away from me. Then she looked up. A leather-clad Nazi fell from the ceiling, screaming bloody murder, and dropped right on top of me.
I punched him off, taking out his eye. Blood squirted all over the place. I lifted him up, my arms wrapped around him like I was Greco-Roman wrestling, and then I ran him into the wall. The whole time, I was saying something about how stupid he was for thinking he could sneak attack us but that was dialogue so cringey that you don't want to see it.
"Oh yeah," I said. "You think you're a genius, fuckface? I'm smarter than all of you combined. I can outwit your mastermind. Now let me smear your brains on the wall!"
Dammit.
Anyway, when I finished pummeling that guy, I
stared at the bloodstain he left and realized that I had suddenly become bizarrely sadistic. I couldn't explain it. Was it because they were video game constructs? Or maybe it was that they were Nazis? Or working for the Hurricanes? Either way, the shock and horror of killing a man had become so passé I forgot what it even felt like twenty pages ago.
As for why I was able to kill them with such efficiency, I saw about six notifications that I had leveled up.
"Okay, hold the phone. What's going on here? How am I leveling up this easily?"
Maria giggled, the first time I ever heard her doing so. "That's exactly what I mean. That's how you can know that you're the one we need. You are able to level up quickly and efficiently."
"But how?"
Before she could answer, we heard thumping coming from the floor above. I quickly checked out what I had leveled up— one-handed weapons, two-wheeled vehicles, and my health and mana surprisingly. I didn't even know how I managed that.
Maria ran up the stairs, keeping the blade end of the sword held out. I didn't know why she would do that until she reached the top of the flight of stairs and someone grabbed the blade in an attempt to disarm her. Needless to say, they made a regrettable miscalculation as their palm got gashed.
I came in with a double-blast from the shotgun. I didn't know how I did it until I saw that my thumb had hit a tiny little red switch on the side of the grip— "DOUBLE SHOT" vs "SINGLE SHOT".
It got the job done, as whatever was left of the Nazi punk's midsection had splattered against the wall. As I passed him up, I took a good long look at that armband. Definitely the swastika with nothing else. Not any ID that he was working for the Hurricanes or anything.
I decided to loot him and it was there that I found a crumpled-up note.
So besides the tryhardiness of that cringey letter making me let out a ‘huh?’ I said out loud, "Reinhardt?" and turned to Maria. "Hey, they might have the girls on that zeppelin that Ana's gonna shoot down."
Maria said, "I don't think they do just yet. They need to get it filled up."
"Where even is the ze—"
The whole house shook, and it sounded like something was squeezing out the walls of the floor just above the one we were on. We ran back to the stairwell and up the next flight of stairs and saw that the zeppelin was still inflating. The Nazis opened fire at us as several of their rank fled into the airship, and we couldn't properly see if the girls were with them. I aimed the shotgun around the door and fired blindly, knowing there was a chance I'd hit one of them but that was a chance I'd take if I could at least clear out the punks.
The doorframe chipped away beside us as bullets dug into the wall. Maria looked around and said, "They're not here!"
"How do you know?"
"The passenger car is empty. Look at it!"
I took a gamble and looked around the side as well. Just as she had said, it was empty— the whole thing was transparent, so there was no hiding anyone.
One particularly rotten looking man limped over into the car and beat his assistants with his cane. He wore a monocle, but that probably wasn't because he was classy or blind. What's more, he had furious sideburns that looked too over the top even for the 1970s.
Maria said, "There he is. Let him get on the zeppelin."
Once he boarded, several of the other Nazis also got on.
I tried firing, but I was out of rounds so I pulled out my Uzi. That was also empty. Maria tossed me the sword.
"Make it count."
"I can't just run in there like Rambo!"
"No, beta male, I mean, throw it."
I looked at her with a twist to my face and grimaced so hard that I could feel the muscles in my cheeks start to snap. "I don't think I have that skill yet." I controlled my inner bitch-o-matic to stop myself from adding more snark because I knew that she would at least have a reason.
And that reason was, "No, but you could at least get some experience from it. Then you can keep building it so that, in the future, you can snipe someone with a sword." Damn, what a fine reason.
I stood, ducked back and forth from behind cover, and threw the sword at one of the retreating Nazis. To my shock, I missed and the sword clanged and slid on the floor.
"Good attempt, little man." She patted my back. “You’ll get better.”
I missed. I didn’t kill a single Nazi. This wasn’t the time to boost my morale— this was the time to find a fully-automatic shotgun and pump death into the room. She saw me as a wimpy little beta boy, didn’t she? Something to coddle and shelter.
By that point, I just didn’t care.
Once everyone was onboard, the zeppelin lifted off. It started to float away, its speed boosted by jets on the side of the airframe. Maria ran out on to the roof and shouted, "Ana, rocket launcher, now!"
Then she turned to me and said, "You might want to shield your eyes. It's about to get very bright."
Ana fired, and the missile popped out, activated its jet thrusters, and streaked upwards. I felt a little surprised at how far the zeppelin had already gotten because the missile traveled at least a few miles.
Maria pulled out her walkie talkie and played with the radio receiver. She put it up to her ears and grinned.
Then, the missile made impact. The explosion was bigger than anything I'd ever seen in my life— despite the distance, the fireball had to have reached halfway to the house. And it felt hot. Real hot. Like a sitting in a broiler during a heatwave in the desert during the summer 'hot', if for a moment. The white light filled the sky, chasing away the night. We had to turn away until the flash had subsided. And then came the mushroom cloud. All that from a missile barely larger than my fist.
The sheer physics defying nature of the game was starting to grow on me. I laughed. I cheered on Ana, and she did a bow for me.
Then I turned to Maria and asked, "So what was the point of that?"
She lifted up the walkie talkie and said, "We needed to wait until he sent a message that he was on his way back. That would change the security in Amville and help out some of our friends there." Then she walked back indoors, but I followed and overtook her.
"What about the girls? Rebecca and Dawn, I think you said."
"They're in this house, that I know. They were transported here, according to Radio Dulwich."
Because it was the hour of Twenty Questions, I went, "Radio Dulwich? What's that?"
"That's the pirate radio that sends out encrypted information. If I had to guess, they're in the basement. And by the way, this means there'll be more of the Rocket 88 on the roads."
"That's fine with me. They can keep sending them as long as they want." I shocked myself by saying that, and once it was out into the universe, I knew I couldn't take it back.
"My my, little man. Aren't you more confident?"
I chuckled and said, "Well, the blood's really pumping right now. When all this is said and done, I'll prolly go back to being emo."
She passed me and pulled a manila folder out from a filing cabinet. “If I had to guess, they must be in the basement.” When she opened it, she scanned it for a few seconds before chucking it into the trash. “Nope. Nothing there.”
I noticed the action but decided to keep quiet about it, figuring she was inevitably going to tell me what that was about anyhow.
We made our way to the basement and kicked the door down. A Nazi thug cowered in the corner and pointed at the girls, so we let him go. However, there was a Beretta laying on the table. I picked it up, cocked it, and shot the bastard as he ran. If for no one else, at least that would be for my friend. I wasn't going to let any of them walk away so lightly— it was their own philosophy that said ‘the weak must fear the strong’, so why not start turning the tables on them?
The two girls sat tied to wooden chairs. Maria snapped the rope with a karate chop and I helped them to their feet. They thanked us profusely. Especially me. I repeat, Maria snapped the rope and I stood there awkwardly, grabbing their hands and pulling them up as i
f they had no control of their legs. I was their hero. Me. And I knew where this was going.
"Thank you, oh thank you!" one of them said. "You really saved us!" And she ran her hands across my chest. "We could never repay you enough!"
One was blonde and wore a very tight-fitting red dress that she seemed to be spilling out of. The other, who as aforementioned as getting a bit too close too quickly, had fiery red locks and squeezed into the skinniest jeans I’d ever seen, even showing off her cameltoe. Both looked fairly normal, though with light tan skin. The one in the red dress also wore matching sharply angled shin-high boots.
As we helped them out to ground level, two more bikers rolled up. However, Ana and Maria walked out ahead of me and waved to them so I figured they had to be friendly. They ran their hands down my chest. The blonde, whose nametag said 'Dawn', wrapped her arms around me and said, "Really, how can we ever repay you big man?"
I was getting a stiffy, but I kept my eyes to theirs and said, "I'm just a poor boy trying to get by. You don't need to get me anything. As long as you're safe and this mission is complete and I don't have to—"
THWACK! I got godsmacked in the god. I got ballpwned in the balls. I got shivved in the shlong. The twat waffled me in the yarblockos. I fell over, clutching my dick and screaming loud enough to rip a hole in reality. The demonesses ran. When I looked back to see what they were doing, Rebecca dropkicked one of the riders off their bike while Dawn reverse-clotheslined the other. They hopped on, flashed us the bird and a seig heil respectively, and tore off into the night. Ana and Maria ran past me as well, firing guns— which I didn't know they had and would have been very fucking helpful back when we were trying to 86 the Rocket 88s— and generally trying and failing to headshot the bandits.
I screamed in falsetto, "What the hell?!" And coincidentally, the nutgrab from the big and possibly well-oiled orc came roaring back as I felt each depression in the scrote start screaming pain. The new gooch gulch made me think that my balls had just been busted, that I was now sterile and going to piss blood for the rest of my life. Oh, the pain. Oh, the agony. And it kept coming back in pulses. Ms. Twatwaffen SS dug that steel-toe ‘cross the rocks and shaft, and I felt a terrible wetness.