by Charles Dean
“It’s really quite simple. We break into groups of five--or six if we have leftover people--and play as the opposition. We run simulations on all possible attacks or outcomes over and over again in a safe and secure game setting. We try our best to conquer the town, and then, if we win, we talk about what weakness was exploited,” a rhino-man explained without ever looking up. He looked as if he were too busy with his character sheets to be bothered by anything around him.
“That’s . . .” Darwin considered if this would count as red teaming. “That’s actually pretty ahead of the times. What scenario are you running now?”
“Well, we were, at least until you interrupted us, carrying out simulations on what would happen if you rejected the crown and came to butcher us all. We have to shore up our defenses and do what is best for the peasants, but we’d much rather just have you accept the crown and move on like every other good-natured king before you. After all, you clearly don’t have any issues with the beast-born servants as your right-hand man seems to be one,” the rhino said as he put on some spectacles and turned around to face Darwin. “You are going to take the crown, right?”
“Where is the crown?” Darwin looked around for it, wondering if he were speaking literally or figuratively.
“Oh, Tompkins, go fetch him his crown,” the rhino said while waving his hand like he was brushing dirt off some imaginary object hanging in the air.
“Yes, Councilman Tato.” The guard that had shown the new king into the room bowed and then disappeared. While he may have said that Darwin was higher up on the food chain, he treated the council with more pomp and circumstance than he did Darwin.
Tato? Like Potato? Darwin pondered for a second as he looked at the rhino-man, but, as soon as he saw the were-beast’s shape, he understood immediately where the name came from. Whoever programmed him must have had a good sense of humor to name that poor guy Tato, he laughed to himself.
“Is something funny, King . . . Well, what is your name?” Tato asked, the others still staring at him, one or two even trying to sneak in more gaming.
“Just this whole situation,” Darwin said honestly. Then, seeing Tompkins returning with a crown, he reached out. “Let me see that thing.” The crown was as ordinary as crowns came. It was solid gold, but didn’t have a single jewel to it, and the sides looked like they had different thicknesses throughout. “Is there a reason this has no decoration and kind of looks beat up?” Darwin asked as he stared at the odd, junky crown. He had never anticipated that a solid gold object could so closely resemble a piece of trash.
“It gets resized a lot,” Tompkins answered before Tato or one of the other dice-rolling fogies could finish clearing their throats to interject with their own--Darwin could only assume sarcastic--response.
“Oh.” Darwin looked back at the misshapen piece of head jewelry.
“Differently-shaped heads always taking power and whatnot. We will need to get a smith to fit it to your head, of course. I am pretty sure yours isn’t the size of a panda’s, but that can take place before the coronation or whatever fancy event your kind do to mark the occasion of claiming regency,” Tato said with a sneer, talking down to Darwin again, his tone filled with condemnation and disgust.
Don't like being ruled by someone who looks like a Human, eh? Darwin guessed at the reason. Every race represented in the council probably held the same ire toward Humans and anything that resembled one as the Panda King had. While the townsfolk and merchants he had stumbled across were very clearly humanoid in appearance, these councilmen were as close to looking like their original beasts as could be. They didn't have any traces of humanity on them. “That's fine. I'll figure it out. Actually, there is another problem we need to address. How is this little group put together?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” A new voice, one coming from a giant polar bear who had looked up at Darwin, said tersely.
“Are you elected? Do the people come and choose you to represent them?” Darwin clarified his question.
“Those plebs? Of course not. We were hand-picked by the king himself as the finest representatives from the royal families of Peh-Ting Zhou.” The polar bear couldn't have spoken with a more snobbish accent if he tried.
“The king? You mean me? I don't remember picking any of you.” Darwin’s sighed. It wasn't out of frustration, but rather relief at how easy they were making this on him.
“He meant the old king. You're not daft, are you?” The rhino groaned, and then, almost as if realizing too late that he had said this to the king and not one of the other humans he considered scum, he tacked on, “I mean, not that I think you are. I am just saying, if you are, that's why we are here, umm . . . Just in case.”
“You were loyal to him, right?” Darwin asked the room. They all nodded, some even verbally acknowledging the question with a ‘yes’ or an ‘of course.’ “Well, then that makes three reasons I have to kill you all,” he said as he calmly pulled out his zweihander.
“I was worried you'd spend forever talking to corpses.” Kitchens started his usual slow walk toward his first chosen opponent.
“Tompkins, if anyone escapes this room while we are busy, I will hunt you down and kill you,” Darwin threatened before turning back to the paling group of old, snobby aristocrats.
“Yes, Your Highness.” Tompkins readied his halberd like a staff as he guarded the only exit to the room.
“You're not going to make me do all the work, are you?” Kitchens asked as first blood was drawn, and a fat ape lost its head. The second it happened, the cowering, quaking crowd, which had sat frozen in place like a shocked deer caught in the headlights of Darwin's initial declaration, burst into high-pitched screams, pleads and sniffles as they panicked and started to flee towards the exit.
As understandable as their noisy, frightened flight was, it was also grating on Darwin’s ears and his patience. The room almost echoed their pitiful screams. Why won't any of them just fight back, he complained internally as he chopped one of them in half. On the battlefield, they come to you. It makes it easy. Here, there is so much more chasing and effort involved. He felt malice boil in his blood as his second swing fell half an inch short of a good clean cut through a fleeing pig. It still killed the pig, but it just wasn't the crisp, down-the-middle cut he had wanted.
“You feel like barbeque after this?” Kitchens asked, likely inspired by the smell of pieces of Mr. Bacon being roasted on Darwin's flaming blade. After all, it had definitely made Darwin hungry.
“I am, and I think there should be enough here for everyone in Daniel and Alex’s group to eat.
“So this will go from company-murder-retreat to a nice guild picnic?” Kitchens chuckled as his sword cut through another one of the sniveling bureaucrats.
“Sure.” Darwin nodded assent as his sword sliced cleanly through the arms Tato had held up in self-defense.
“Question, boss: I get that they were loyal to the previous king, and we need something for the guild, but what's the third reason we are killing them?” Kitchens called out over the screaming councilmen as he methodically whittled their numbers down. It had been less than a minute, and Kitchens and Darwin had already wiped out well over half of them.
“Have you ever heard the story of Agathocles?” Darwin asked.
“I may have. The name sounds familiar, but then again, every Greek name from the old days sounds familiar.”
“Well, throughout history, there have been tons of evil rulers who have risen to power through violence or cruelty. For the early part, they mostly end up with a fate that I’d prefer not to have: They died. Just look at how many times the Italian city states changed hands. That is, of course, with a few exceptions in the early chronicles, my favorite being Agathocles,” Darwin said, beginning his story as his sword sliced and diced through the dwindling crowd of politicians.
“Agathocles was the lowborn son of a good-for-nothing potter, but he went the military route instead of following his father’s footsteps. Thro
ugh use of merciless tactics and a cunning mind, he was able to rise to the position of Praetor of Syracuse. Now, this normally would be the end of the career path for most military men of his low birth, never having another step up to take, but he was smart about it. He, under the guise of a concerned citizen and respected military commander, assembled the people of the senate as if he was going to tell them of some important strategy or matter of business that needed to be addressed in order to help them deal with the Carthaginians. Except, when they all got there, he butchered them. He had well-paid mercenaries and men loyal to him waiting for his order, and they massacred what is said to be the ten thousand richest citizens in Syracuse that night, making Agathocles both rich and uncontested. Essentially, he went from praetor to dictator with a single command; and, since there were no dissenters or men loyal to the previous senate left alive, there was no one to challenge him in times of hardship during the war with Carthage that followed. He lived a long and happy life, dying a rich and fat man with many heirs--something I hope to do myself.”
“Die from obesity?” Kitchens replied with a smirk.
“No, live a long and happy life,” Darwin responded, a bit miffed.
“So you read a lot of history?” Kitchens asked. “If you did, you’d have that in common with half of my old barracks. They used to read all the time. Kind of surprised me. I expected to be serving with dumb grunts, but the free time had us all studying something.”
“Nah, it was something I read as a required summer reading for one of my haughty, better-than-thou English teachers. I was one of the dorky kids that actually did the reading.” Darwin paused to shrug after decapitating another fat, piggish councilman. “But the point remains: We need to butcher everyone here and every family that had close political ties to the previous Panda, or we’ll end up like Cesare Borgia.”
“I take it that one didn’t properly kill off his dissenters? Or, at least, he didn’t in the fifty-odd television shows made about him.”
“And, for his mercy, he paid a price I’m not too eager to share.” Darwin sheathed his zweihander. Everyone in the room but Tompkins was dead, and their blood was making it so that Darwin and Kitchens were having to slosh more than walk across the room as they returned to the entrance. “Tompkins, how many guards do we have nearby?”
“There is only me and nine others on duty in the palace at the moment. The garrisons surrounding the palace are a bit understaffed too.” Tompkins let a big smile spread across his face. “Apparently, some maniac killed off all the poor tigers and bears that used to work there.”
Man, this race stuff is a big deal here, isn’t it? Darwin noted the guard’s joy at the bears and tigers dying. “Alright, well, find as many people as you can. I want these bodies taken to a butcher and every part of them turned into steak-sized slices for cooking.”
“The heads,” Kitchens reminded Darwin.
“Oh, yeah, except the heads. Leave those intact.” Darwin’s eye fell on one of the men whose head had been split right down the middle. “Well, as intact as they are now. Just put them in a bag and bring them to the gate. Kitchens and I have to go greet our new military wing.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Tompkins’ tone was much more reverent after Darwin removed the acting advisors from their positions.
“So, this may wrap up the NPC issue, but we still need something for our men to kill, and we still need to handle the players who may be after us, and . . .” Kitchens stopped and looked at Darwin. “And you already know what you’re going to do, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Let’s just go have a nice feast. Hey, Tompkins, before you take care of this meat, I need one more thing from you,” Darwin said as he looked over at the lynx. “I need you to tell every citizen of this town to stay inside and lock his doors for the next few hours. Tell the bars to close their doors and not let anyone in who isn’t a citizen or resident of this city.”
“Umm, Your Highness, I’m not entirely sure how easy it will be to do that,” Tompkins replied hesitantly with a frown. “I can try though.”
“You have one hour. I need all these tasks done, and I don’t care how you do it. Here, take this.” Darwin handed Tompkins a hundred gold pieces. “Go hire criers if you have to. Those doors better be shut, and the streets better be empty.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Tompkins bowed and then practically darted out of the room.
“You think he was afraid you were going to make the list of things to do longer?” Kitchens asked as he stared at the dust trail Tompkins left.
“Maybe. No point in worrying about it now though. Let’s go enjoy a barbeque,” Darwin laughed, and the two of them headed to the gates where Alex and Daniel were supposed to meet them soon.
Chapter 9 – Crap, I died! Hit the Reset Button.
Kass:
Light. Red, blurry light obscured Kass’s vision as she struggled for breath. What . . . What is that light? Turn it off. “I just need a little more . . .” She choked on the words as her eyes fluttered, struggling for clarity. She tried to turn her head and look around when pain shot through her stomach and rippled up her chest and into her throat. Ow, ow ow ow. She grimaced, clutching the spot where the first bullet had entered. Then she heard clicking, the familiar clicking her brain instantly recognized as keystrokes across the mechanical keyboard her dad sometimes insisted on using when working at home. It was accompanied by a smacking and popping sound. Dad . . . Is he here? She tried rubbing her eyes, the effort of moving creating more tremors of discomfort where she had been shot. When she looked over to see where the clicking was coming from, she saw Stephanie’s back--or at least she thought it was Stephanie. After all, no-one else she knew chewed their bubble gum quite like that.
While she couldn’t see Stephanie’s face, she could see the back of her head with her black hair tied up in a ponytail and draped over the chair she was sitting in. She was leaning back in the chair with a keyboard on her lap, watching three different monitors. “Stephanie?” she asked, the words failing to come out well. The injury had taken its toll, and, even though she was mostly certain that she hadn’t been shot in a lung, it was too hard to breathe in or push out enough air to generate much of a voice.
“That’s usually my name,” Stephanie responded without even taking a break in her typing.
Kass wanted to form some retort to the smart-aleck response, but her pounding head and breathless voice left her muted as she did her best to sit up without causing herself any more harm.
“Oh!” Stephanie threw the keyboard onto the desk in front of her, turned her chair around and popped up in half a second. “I am so sorry! I completely forgot about you. You know how work is,” she said as she walked over to the bed Kass had been lying on. “How are you holding up? Do you feel okay?” she said when she noticed Kass wasn’t responding. She put a hand on Kass’s forehead. “Hmm, no fever, and you did talk earlier. You just feeling weak?”
Kass nodded. Weak is an understatement. I feel like someone ran over me with a truck and then backed up for good measure, just to make sure I wasn’t still around.
“Alright, good. That’s great. I have to be honest: I didn’t know if you’d actually live. You were bleeding pretty badly, covering the floor like a bottle of ketchup seeking revenge against its angry potato rivals on a white plate, so I kind of . . .” Stephanie paused, frowning on one side of her mouth in a way that puffed out only her left cheek. “I kind of patched you up, but it wasn’t enough. We didn’t have time to see what blood type you were, so I gave you some of mine. I couldn’t give you as much as you needed, given that I needed to stay alive too, but I gave you enough to live and get you back here. That killer headache you are having, like a hangover, it’s probably the dehydration. But yeah, the bullets are still in your gut. I wanted to wait until you had enough blood back in you before I rooted around and pulled them out. Dumbest thing you ever see on television shows from the 1900s is that every joe schmoe in an action film has to pull the bullet out as soon
as they get to a safe spot . . . like them digging around with grubby fingers or metal tools is going to somehow undo any damage and not make it worse.”
“But . . .” Kass tried to hold onto her thoughts. She wasn’t sure if she felt the headache as much as the fatigue. “But how was that enough?” she managed. She wanted to get out a longer sentence: How did a little bit of blood stop me from dying from three gunshot wounds? She didn’t know much about medicine, but she was pretty sure she should have lost enough blood that a simple transfusion from someone who still needed to carry her out of the place wouldn’t be enough.
“Well, let’s just say that the creator gave us something special in our blood and leave it at that,” Stephanie said, pulling her rolly chair over to sit next to Kass. “Now, that said, how are you holding up? I put orange juice on the nightstand for you. I imagine you’re going to need a lot.” Stephanie grabbed the glass and gently put it in Kass’s hand.
Kass, not realizing how thirsty she was, found herself trying to down it all at once. Halfway through, however, she ended up choking and almost coughed it up and had to take a break for a moment. “Thanks,” she said as she came up for air and took a brief respite from gulping down the orange juice. “So . . .” Kass started, but the words were taking a while to get out. So why were you there? she wondered to herself, again failing to finish her thought aloud.
“There, there. Are you really sure you want to be talking right now?” Stephanie asked, leaning back in her chair as she watched Kass look around. “Do you need some more orange juice?”
Kass nodded.
“Alright, here you go,” Steph said, handing her another glass from the nightstand.
Kass looked over to see that there were still two more glasses waiting if she need them. She just hadn’t noticed them at first because they were behind a lamp. “Thanks,” she said, taking another sip.
“You know, you’re lucky to be alive. I almost wasn’t there,” Stephanie said. “And if it had been the other grunt, well, he might have shot you in the head, and that would have been that. Nothing I can do to heal a headshot,” Stephanie said with a shrug.