by Macronomicon
Alien bastards didn’t think a pencil and a pad of paper might come in handy, though. Jeb refocused on his piece of ‘paper’ and got back to listing his Great Ideas ™ for how to use Mystic Trigger.
1. Land Mine
2. Automate the Vivicant Cane
3. Finger Gun
4. Shield
5. Grenades
6. Projectile Return
7. Safety phrases
Jeb tapped the other end of the burnt stick on the ‘paper’ but couldn’t think of any new ideas off the top of his head.
Then he went about defining how they might work.
For the land mine, if a creature larger than x and not him or Jess steps above the object, then boom.
Simple.
For the automated Vivicant cane, he could assign several different triggers to several different reserves of power bound to the cane.
Heart rate substantially below resting rate? Trigger the cane. Blood pressure dropping precipitously? Trigger the cane.
In addition to the passive triggers that could save his ass when he got blindsided, he could assign active triggers to it, such as simply saying a safety phrase such as ‘I’m not wounded, I’m just getting warmed up.’
Jeb chuckled at the thought of saying something that cringy out loud. Still, it was an observable event.
Finger gun he’d already done.
Shield was kind of an extension of the finger-gun.
Adopt a ‘shielding’ pose, with his arm curled up, shoulder raised, and head tucked in, and a shield of telekinetically stabilized air would spring to life, following his movements…no, it can’t follow my movements. It can only spring the shield, then let it hang there. It has no idea where I am, nor the ability to follow me.
Still, it provided some interesting utility, and Jeb saw himself using it.
Grenades were another simple extension of the concept. He could either take a Myst lens, or make several dozen telekinetic arrows bound to a single pebble.
Throw the pebble and shout ‘fire in the hole!’ and boom. People die.
Might want a more obscure command trigger. Easily guessed ones could get me killed on accident. Wait no, if the condition is that I say it, the chances are slim…
Projectile return was simple. He could just bind several dozen triggers to himself, and when an object approached above a certain speed on a trajectory to hit him, the closest trigger leaps out and grabs the object, turns it one hundred and eighty degrees, then returns to sender.
Wait. That one might not work. It needs a way of knowing where the projectile is to reach out and grab it.
I know! I can have it create a bubble around me, and anything that intersects with the bubble gets spat back. It doesn’t need to seek out the projective specifically. I’ll need to create a variety of ranges so they don’t interfere with each other, but that’s not a big fuss.
What had inspired the Projectile Return was the fact that the people to the north used poison darts. Jeb did not want to get hit by one of those.
Let’s say…anything faster than ninety miles per hour. I’m pretty sure I could dodge anything slower than that, even without the foot.
Last but not least, Safety Phrases.
Or as I like to call them, Insurance policies.
Tied up? Wink three times with your right eye, and a blade of telekinetic force will start sawing 2 inches away from your arm, ending flush with the skin. As long as you don’t move.
Bad guys stole your stuff, have you under guard and you need a distraction? Say ‘Scarabs are Scary’ and spawn a swarm of flesh eating scarabs.
“Oh, my god,” Jeb said, resting his forehead in his hand.
“What is it?” Jessica asked, glancing at him.
“I just realized. This is the magical Batman class. I have to prepare for every eventuality.”
“How about the eventuality that I’ve hidden the last bag of M&Ms?” Jess asked.
Jeb deepened his voice to a raspy growl, his face crumpling into a rictus of rage.
“Where are they!?”
Chapter 8: Proof of concept
***2 days 4 hours remaining***
“Okay, let’s double check my list.” Jeb said, ticking off his ‘traps’.
Finger-gun clips: ‘ack’ X10 ☑ ‘pip’x10 ☑ ‘kip’ X10 ☑ ‘Alpha Strike’ ☠
Cane Auto: x4 BP ☑ HR ☑ BD ☑ OD ☑
Cane Manual: x2 ‘just getting started’☑ ‘alt blinks’☑
Shield: x4 ☑
Armor: head ☑ torso ☑ legs ☑ upper arms ☑ lower arms ☑
Projectile reflection x50 ☑
Safety Phrases: restraints ‘3W’ ☑ ‘Scarabs’ ☑ ‘Plitskin’ ☑ ‘no homo’ ☑ ‘Room full of Charlies’☠
Grenades ‘go boom’: ‘nut’ ☑ ‘rock’ ☑ ‘knife’ ☑ ‘authorize magical girl transformation’☠
Jeb….couldn’t think of anything more. He was absolutely sure there were more useful things he could add, but he simply…wasn’t aware of them yet.
He leaned forward, staring into the sheet, trying to squeeze out more ideas out of his brain. Anything more…
“Come on, you’ve been dicking around for hours! Let’s go!” Jessica cajoled. “Those frog-people aren’t gonna slaughter themselves!”
He considered offering a spar just to see how his ideas worked in reality, but the majority of them were designed to be lethal, the rest were single-use defensive, and resetting them would cost him even more time.
I’m just gonna have to figure out how they handle in the crucible of combat.
He grabbed the pegleg Jessica had carved while she was waiting and slipped it over his stump, the wood fitting snug all the way up to his knee. Once it was on, he pushed himself to his feet – foot – . It hadn’t actually taken her that long to carve, a person with close to thirty Body can basically treat hardwood like a soft cheese.
Jeb rolled up his list – written on a mac and cheese package – and tucked it in his pocket before he started clomping after her, using the Vivicant cane to help keep his balance.
Jeb would for all the world look like your average one-legged LARPer, were it not for the broken spearhead and stiletto orbiting him like satellites.
Stab stab.
***Bubli, Krokker scout***
Ah, another human, Bubli thought, thought, his animalistic senses picking up two humans trekking through their lands. Humans were remarkably tasty. Each of the ones they’d caught thus far had been deliciously fatty.
Drool threatened to leak out of Bubli’s mouth imagining another feast like the one a few nights ago.
No, stay focused, he thought, swallowing. Humans were getting scarcer, and the ones who remained were by necessity more dangerous than the first ones. He couldn’t afford to get complacent.
We’ll wait until they get close to a sticky-tree, then ambush them.
So it went for a good half hour, Bubli silently following the blundering through the woods. As he crept along, he gradually picked up more and more krokker scouts as he went, the frog people silently sharing looks of knowing anticipation as they shadowed the loud humans.
Their skin changed colors to match their hiding spots, waiting patiently for the humans to make a mistake.
Finally it happened. The humans were walking along, when a root-runner from a sticky-tree caught the smaller human on the arm.
“Oh no, I got caught on this sticky piece of wood…”
Unfortunately, the Krokkers weren’t familiar enough with humans to recognize bad acting.
Now! Shoot the unhindered one then we’ll swoop in and take them both!
Bubli drew in a silent breath and raised his blowpipe to his lips, six other krokker following suit.
Phew! With a quiet puff of air, the deadly poisonous darts trailing bright white feathers streaked through the air, aiming for the bigger human’s face and neck.
Bubli thought he saw a flicker in the air, then all the white streaks in the air reversed course. In the
blink of an eye, Bubli was staring at a puff of feather hanging below his right cheek.
What!? NO!
Bubli ripped the dart out of his face as quickly as he could, but the rigid paralysis was already setting in.
***Jeb***
You have gained a level!
You are now level 21!
“That works a lot better than I thought,” Jeb said, dropping the point in Myst as Jessica chopped the sticky tree tendril off her arm with a few casual slices of Razorback. The frog-people were too busy trying and failing to run away to launch another attack, their limbs stiffening into horrifying contortions.
The first ‘bubble’ had triggered and caught three of the projectiles and reversed their course, and the second ‘bubble’ had caught the remaining four.
Jeb had expected to have to spend one use on each projectile, but he was happy to learn that tightly packed projectiles that caught the bubble at the same time would all be returned on the same charge. Meaning he had slightly better fuel efficiency than he thought, especially against ambushes. He still had forty-eight layers left.
Make a note to replace those.
Man, those frogs dropped quick. I wonder what would’ve happened if they’d decided to attack Jessica too?
Sudden realization.
“That’s what I was forgetting!” Jeb said, smacking his forehead. “Jess, let me put some shields on you too.”
***Later***
“So you now have a bundle of ten shots of Myst at the tip of your finger.” Jeb said. “With the keyword ‘pip’ and then the number, you’ll shoot a mind-bullet. Like so.”
Jeb aimed at a nearby tree.
“pip one.”
SSSHHH! Air hissed as the solidified air was pushed through the nearest tree with a crack!
Jessica frowned, and pointed her finger at another tree.
“pip one.”
SSHHH – Crack!
Another hole opened up in another tree.
A sinister smile creeped on to Jessica’s face. It didn’t worry Jeb for himself so much as all the other schmucks out there.
“The ‘trap’,” Jeb made air quotes, “is set only to trigger if you say the keyword. So don’t worry about us setting each other’s off by accident. You can use the finger bullets at your discretion, but I’d save ‘em for a rainy day if I was you.”
“And how many shields did you give me?” Jessica asked.
“Twelve. I’ve got no way of keeping track of your number in combat so pay attention to how many you’ve got left.”
“Got it.” She nodded. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I’m giving you these with the tacit understanding that they will help you watch my back better,” Jeb said, holding out his hand. “Let me reload you.”
She put her hand in his, and Jeb tried to ignore the sensation of her skin against his rough hands as he focused on making another ‘pip one’ bullet on her finger. Even after all that Body, her skin felt soft and delicate, her bones small and frail, despite those impressions being demonstrably not true.
He drew in Myst, increased the size of his core by a miniscule amount, then siphoned off the energy, binding it into a tight little pin head of energy that would only go off if Jessica Stile were to say ‘pip one’.
After that was done, he reloaded his own finger gun, topped off his projectile reflector bubbles, and the two of them sorted through dead frog people.
They didn’t have much in the way of weapons or treasure on them other than the leather clothes they wore, and the blowpipes.
They carried about four darts apiece, coated in a powerful, oily paralytic, and that was what Jeb was most interested in.
Lethal poison darts: I’d rather have one and not need it, than need it and not have one.
He dumped them all into the biggest pouch, being careful not to touch them with his fingers before sealing the pouch up and hanging it from his belt.
Just like that, they made their way to the heart of the krokker territory, stopping every once in a while to lure out the scouts that kept tailing them. There was really no way to tell whether they were being followed by the color-shifting creatures other than to lure them out.
Once they got close to their village, the smell of cooking meat and smoke gave it away, along with the near-invisible thread of smoke above the treetops.
Let’s see, we’ve counter-ambushed some twenty-eight froggos, so hopefully their numbers are low.
He and Jessica dropped low, and crawled forward. Jeb was concerned his pegleg might fall off, but the straps held on surprisingly well as they approached, keeping as low as possible.
Krokkers of every size and coloration were running back and forth in the village, which seemed to house some two hundred of the creatures. Some of them were obviously children, and others were either teenagers, or female. It was hard to get a read on sex, since they didn’t have boobs.
They were peacefully chatting, cooking, kicking balls back and forth in the center of the clearing. They could have been a tribe of humans from the amazon, and it wouldn’t have looked any different.
Except…
Yep, that’s totally a human ribcage over the fire.
“How are we doing this?” Jessica whispered.
“Shock and awe.” Jeb said, reaching into his grenade bag and pulling out something small, heavy and brown. “I’m gonna nut all over these people.”
“Please, stop.”
Jeb hauled back and tossed the nut grenade out into the center of the peaceful village of obviously sapient civilians.
The nut arced high, tumbling in midair until it dropped about seventy feet in, just inside the first row of houses. Several frog-people glanced at it curiously, stepping closer to investigate.
Jeb flattened himself to the earth, and whispered into the ground.
“Nut go boom.”
There was a thunderous explosion, followed by a thrashing sound as telekinetic blades erupted out in every direction, chunking everything and everyone within fifty feet of the grenade. Straw houses collapsed in on themselves.
Frog-people screamed.
…And he was back in the hallway, staring down at his own bloodied corpse, crushed to the bed by the collapsed ceiling, blood leaking from his mouth as he desperately tried to breath.
My chest feels tight. Son of a bitch something’s on top of me, Jeb thought, straining to take off the armor so he could breathe. It took him at least thirty seconds fumbling with his armor until it was loose enough for him to inhale a good lungful of air.
Jesus, I’m still alive, I’m still alive, He chanted, trying to convince himself of it.
Small parts of him thought that maybe…just maybe he was lying there dying, all this craziness he was going through was the last neurons in his brain firing, trying to generate some kind of pattern from the lack of oxygen.
Fuck you, Jacob’s ladder. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to hate that movie anyway.
He envisioned the worming thought as a spike, slowly bursting its way through the ceiling, crushing his rational mind under its weight. Sometimes he didn’t feel the spike for months, but doing this?
This brought it all back.
“You coming?” Jessica asked, frowning down at where he was panting, staring up at the canopy, searching for signs of a collapsed roof while trying to shut out the sounds of screams.
“You’re real right?” Jeb asked, glancing over at her.
“I’ll take that as a maybe,” Jess said, leaping to her feet and diving into the chaos.
That alone gave him the impetus he needed to get to his feet.
You do not leave your team on their own.
That thought brought back the memories, and Jeb looked down at the ugly scar on his hand, where he’d slipped trying to lift the ceiling off of Tyler. He hadn’t gotten around to telling the therapist yet, but sometimes that scar was his only lifeline. Proof that he’d survived. That he’d been the lucky one.
Jeb snorted. He d
idn’t feel like the lucky one, sometimes.
On and on we go, he thought, glancing up at the canopy where he could feel certain doom looming. The trees shook their branches comfortingly, sympathy written on their faces.
Yeah, I know. Gotta get to work.
Jeb walked out into the chaos, clomping forward with his cane, the knife and spear whipping around him like blender blades, puncturing or mauling anyone or anything stupid enough to get close to him.
The frog’s favorite weapons quickly became their undoing as the first round of warriors committed suicide by reflective bubble. After that, things got a little more dicey.
I should use my cane with the left hand, he realized after nearly dropping the ivory stick trying to hold onto it and shoot someone charging him with a claymore at the same time.
The creatures might prefer blowdarts, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have a plethora of alternatives.
I wonder if this is a side effect of the surge of humans in the forest? Otherwise I have no idea where they’re getting so much steel.
They had a tribal society and hut houses that would fit bush tribesmen, but they were armed to the teeth with steel swords and axes, presumably pilfered from unfortunate dead people.
Three more warriors dove out of a nearby hut as he passed by. He pinned two of them to the wall with the Penetrator and his trusty spearhead, the last one, he pointed a finger at.
“Pip six.”
The spike of telekinetically hardened air forced itself through the frogman’s chest. The creature stumbled a few times, looking down at the gushing hole with unmistakable confusion.
Jeb kept clomping along, his two blades pulling themselves out of the frogmen and bouncing along beside him. He kept them in nice and tight, so he could use them to stop more suicide charges if he had to.
He didn’t have a ‘technique’ yet. Nobody had a manual for how to maximize telekinetic combat effectiveness, so he was experimenting. Should I keep one in tight and one roaming? Should I have something defensive like a floating shield? A floating shield with a sharp edge? Well, if that’s the case, why not an oversized circular saw blade? It could do both.
It was with these kinds of thoughts that he and Jessica tore through the remaining krokkers, until they came upon the largest hut, practically a mansion by their standards.