Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 5

Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia

The thirteen seconds seemed to take thirteen hours. Griffin had been battered around by the Mother, unable to keep track of the shrapnel from the torn-up machinery or the dozens of legs that stabbed in from every direction. The DEEP Suit’s armor plating held up, distributing the force of the monster’s blows so that instead of broken bones, he got bruises. Luckily, the Mother couldn’t turn well enough in the smaller room to get Griffin in front of its plasma lens array on the front of its face so at least he didn’t have to avoid plasma beams as well.

The timer finally ticked down and the twin guns on his shoulders spun in tandem until they were pointed at different targets on the Mother. Griffin’s HUD had marked dozens of weak points on the Mother, while his Advanced Targeting System pointed the guns on his shoulders at the monster. He got hit by a leg, which slammed him three meters away into a wrecked metal box that was sparking and spewing dark grey smoke into the room.

“Kismet, can you work out how to fire these guns?” Griffin asked, feeling a deep pain in his ribs as he struggled back to his feet. “They’re pointing at the Mother but they’re not doing anything!” He stumbled back, ducking at the same time to avoid a spinning saw blade from a cybernetic attachment on the Mother.

“The Suit responds to your will!” Kismet told him. Her voice sounded crystal clear and like she was speaking directly into his ear through speakers in the DEEP Suit’s helmet. “All you need to do is will the guns to fire and they will!”

“Yeah, sure, okay!” Griffin didn’t bother thinking too much about it. He just concentrated on making the guns fire.

The guns reacted immediately, blasting at the monster with rapid shots into its side. They didn’t shoot bullets, though, but rather bolts of silver light. Each shot cost 10 sparks of tensa and the damage they did to the Mother was pretty underwhelming. Each time a bolt hit the Mother, its carapace cracked a little, and orange blood trickled from the wound. The Mother barely even acknowledged the injury, though it was still trying to kill Griffin. The Advanced Targeting System updated its targeting to go after weak points on the Mother, focusing on its joints.

The guns at his shoulders spun and fired, the new targets producing a much more dramatic reaction from the Mother than the previous shots. The monster screeched and redoubled its efforts to crush the thing that had dared injure it. But Griffin’s shots were pinpoint in their accuracy thanks to his Advanced Targeting System and the damage from the shots added up so that the Mother couldn’t move as well anymore. Griffin wanted to try out the Particle Cannon that came from the synergy between his DEEP Suit and Dread Consumption grafts, but he didn’t dare experiment any more than he already was.

The Mother was in cramped confines and couldn’t bring its chief weapon to bear on Griffin. It lacked the intelligence to understand when it was in a hopeless battle, all it knew was its hunger for tensa. So the Mother didn’t understand that the tide of the battle had turned and it was now just a matter of time. For his part, Griffin’s energy was flagging and his tensa pool was nearly empty. Even with his anima in the Ten Star Vortex configuration, he couldn’t outpace the cost of his shoulder guns’ shots. He had to take long pauses to refill his tensa pool so he could continue firing.

The Mother’s movements were now the panicked thrashings of a creature in its death throes. The room and all its machinery had been utterly demolished and Griffin hoped they didn’t do anything super important, but he had a bad feeling that they probably did. Griffin had been “fighting” the Mother for…he didn’t know how long. It felt like forever. His breath was coming hot in his lungs and he was straining to keep going.

Even with Griffin’s tensa surging through him, he had to ignore a lot of pain from the beating the Mother was handing out. True, the DEEP Suit mitigated the hits that would have killed him on the spot to ones he could not only live through but continue fighting through, but it still felt like he’d been run over by several trucks. His everything hurt. It was all he could do to keep concentrating on keeping his anima in the Ten Star Vortex configuration to keep refilling his tensa so he could keep shooting his shoulder guns as fast as possible. It was exhausting.

In the end, Griffin’s stamina held out. He managed to keep away from its pained thrashing for long enough that his guns plinked away and managed to mount enough cumulative injuries to it that the creature simply shuddered and died. It twitched a little, and Griffin realized he was still firing his guns into it and stopped. He also realized he’d been screaming the entire time and stopped doing that too. His ears rang and he felt unsteady on his feet. System messages flashed up in front of him, disappearing as he read them.

Achievement Gained!

Solo Boss Kill

Description: Kill a Boss monster of any Class or Level by yourself.

Reward: +2 to all Attributes

He swayed there for a minute, thinking he’d collapse as well, but Kismet’s face flashed up in his HUD, bringing his focus back to his present situation.

“Griffin, you can’t lay down now! There are still two thousand zombies out there! And the Mother just left an enormous hole in the wall. You need to move.” Her chibi-face was severe and she waggled an admonishing finger at him.

Griffin shook his head, trying to clear the persistent fuzziness that was trying to creep in. He tried increasing the speed of the tensa flow within him to burn away the fog in his mind and, surprisingly, it worked. The increased flow put a surge of energy into his muscles and lungs. It made everything hurt more and he couldn’t keep it up for long, but it did the trick for now. He straightened up and nodded.

“Right! I didn’t win yet, still gotta get home!” He’d been so focused on the Mother that he hadn’t paid attention to anything else. Now that he widened his focus, his SONAR painted a grim picture.

There were dozens, maybe even hundreds of zombies just outside the little room he and the Mother had wrecked in their battle. They hadn’t perceived him yet but it was only a matter of time. If they didn’t come after him, they’d want the—Griffin paused and looked at the corpse of the Mother sprawled out in a heap over a wreckage of smoking machinery and rubble. Maybe a little creative butchery would distract the zombies?

He was just about to see what the DEEP Suit’s lethal melee weapon might be or maybe conjure a gigantic meat cleaver when something on his HUD caught his eye. “What’s this 3-D Movement System?” He wondered out loud. “D’you think it might be able to get us out of here without having to fight a horde of zombies?”

Kismet considered the question for a bit. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “That synergy was not recorded in the files that I have for the DEEP Suit project. Legendary Void grafts like Reality Twine are exceedingly rare, so it’s not surprising that they did not have any record of it.”

Griffin shrugged. Looks like it was time for a quick all-or-nothing test. If this didn’t work, he’d have a long and exhausting run ahead of him—one that he wasn’t sure he could survive, even with the DEEP Suit. He considered abandoning everything for his monster butchery idea, but that was less a plan and more a crazy, desperate grasp at the first thing that came to his mind.

“Here goes nothin’,” he said as he selected the icon in his HUD.

Once again, the response from his DEEP Suit was instantaneous. He felt his tensa pool drain as Reality Twine was created and spun into spools in cassettes at his waist and shoulders. Small, fully-rotating launchers emerged from his hips and shoulders and his DEEP Suit OS once again popped up a new message.

ADVANCED TARGETING SYSTEM INTEGRATION WITH 3-D MOVEMENT SYSTEM – 00:22.734

As Griffin watched the timer tick down, he kept a close eye on the crowd of zombies on just the other side of the wall. His magic string had held, but the wall had not. He could pick out the still-intact door with the web of Reality Twine among the wreckage strewn all over the floor.

I guess I should’ve done the whole damn wall, he thought ruefully. Egg on my face. If I live through this I’ll do it right next time.

The timer expired and the message disappeared but otherwise, nothing seemed to change. Frowning, he said, “Well that’s a little disappointing. It didn’t do any—” With an idle thought, he had imagined him zipping up to the ceiling like Spider-Man. Seemingly in response to his thoughts, a red line appeared on his HUD pointing directly up to the ceiling. There were directional arrows on the line pointing upward and a text box popped up with another timer.

Hesitation Detected

A 3-second pause has been detected after choosing a course for 3-D Movement. Accept 3-D Movement System Path? 00:03.845

YES / NO

Griffin cocked an eyebrow at the message and selected “YES” by focusing on it, just to see what would happen. As soon as he made the selection, the launchers at his hips and shoulders fired, sending Reality-Twine anchors into the area around him. As soon as the Reality Twine anchors were set, there was a slight hum of servos and Griffin was yanked upward, the launchers suddenly turning into reels which reeled in the Reality Twine with inexorable speed.

In moments, Griffin was hanging from the ceiling, his Reality Twine anchors keeping him there almost as solidly as if he were on the ground. Kismet’s face popped up in his HUD, her chibi expression winking at him. “It looks like you figured out the 3-D Movement System,” she said. “It’s time to go!”

Griffin nodded and glanced down. Even through the dust and smoke, he could see that zombies were beginning to filter into the little room now that the plasma cybercentipede Mother was no longer thrashing and lashing out. There were maybe a dozen of them beginning to stumble over the loose rubble as they sought out the scent of fresh meat.

Did I even have to use pig brains? Griffin thought as he tried to plot the next course in his mind. These zombies seem just as jazzed about eating dead insect monsters as they were about eating the brain barrels I made.

His SONAR allowed him to have an excellent map of the entire area in his mind and as he imagined the course he’d take, he saw another red line materialize in his HUD that marked out the path he’d chosen. When he’d reached the edge of his perception, he confirmed the path in his mind and tried his best not to scream as the 3-D Movement System began to follow his planned route.

The DEEP Suit seemed to understand his desire to get out of there as quickly as possible, liberally using tension and torque to get him going faster than he thought he’d be able to survive if he were to suddenly hit a wall. He twanged, thrummed, and whistled through the air less like Spider-Man and more like a sack of potatoes being dragged behind a stunt plane. The zombies below him blurred as he shot past.

He nearly vomited as his route took him back up and through the hole in the ceiling where he’d originally entered the zombie storage warehouse. The abrupt change from horizontal momentum to vertical was not only nauseating but also bruising in its force. Then he reached the end of the route and slammed into the ceiling of the hallway above. He even still saw his rope tied to the spur of the rebar as he sailed past.

The DEEP Suit shot out more Reality Twine points and anchored him there. Griffin coughed weakly as he shook his head, still dizzy from his fight with the Mother followed by his sudden escape. His tensa pool was dangerously low since the 3-D Movement System had been quite liberal with the Reality Twine anchor points and they cost 100 sparks apiece.

“I can’t believe how fast I was going there in the end,” Griffin said a little breathlessly. “This DEEP Suit thing is fucking nuts, Kismet. No wonder you wanted me to get it. But…can I tell you something honestly?” He winced as his ribs twinged whenever he breathed. His HUD had a little figure that represented him in the bottom corner of his vision. Usually, it was bright green. Now, the entire figure was outlined in deep amber and filled with the same color.

“I would always prefer honesty, Griffin. I’m a System Eidolon and have been assigned to assist you in your growth as a Reborn and I cannot properly advise you if you actively deceive or tell half-truths.” Kismet replied.

She wasn’t manifesting her holographic body at the moment but had chosen to manifest in his HUD in her cutesy chibi-style animated avatar. It was a little jarring to have such a serious response coming from a cartoonish avatar with little stress marks at her temples.

Griffin replied, “Honestly? This whole monster hunting thing…It fuckin’ sucks, Kismet. I nearly died down there like a hundred times. That thing would’ve eaten me! And that’s ignoring the damn horde of zombies!” When he tried getting too forceful, his ribs hurt even more and he subsided. “Ow, fuck. My ribs hurt and I feel like I’ve been run over by a fleet of dump trucks. I gotta ask again…Are you positively sure, like a hundred thousand percent, never-gonna-give-you-up-never-gonna-let-you-down—”

“Griffin—”

“Fine! Are you sure there’s no way I could get a job as a librarian or maybe an insurance actuarial? Maybe a forensic accountant for a local police force? Something that’s less inherently fucking deadly!?” Griffin asked.

Kismet sighed, her cartoonish hand pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation as a sweat drop appeared hanging over her temple. “Griffin, we’ve gone over this a dozen times now. No matter how many times you escape death or injury by monster, it won’t make your Great House Seal any less a part of your etherheart. The moment you leave this place, you will be hunted by your House and by their enemies.” She looked up at him, her big eyes sincere as she continued, “Your House will be looking for you even now, and it’s impossible to tell just how you’ll be treated by them. Their enemies will be looking just as hard, if not even more assiduously. That DEEP Suit and the skills you develop using your grafts and Attributes are going to be your only defense against the forces of this world. I’m afraid there’s no room for a quiet life in all of that. Not for a long time, anyway.”

Griffin sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. And don’t consider this discussion closed. As soon as we get out of here, I’m gonna disappear. No one will ever find me!”

“Griffin, all you’ve been talking about for the past several weeks has been that town outside your window. If you go to Heldon, you realize that would be like walking directly into House Vasilias’ front door?” Kismet said.

“Hiding in plain sight!” Griffin exclaimed. “No one would expect me to do something so dumb, so no one would be looking for me there. See? Logic.”

“Earth logic and Nolmic logic must have very different purposes,” Kismet replied. “Enough hanging around here, though. This isn’t a safe spot.”

Griffin was about to respond when an odd, persistent but soft shuffling noise made him look behind his back down the long hallway to see what was making the noise. Down the hall, just beyond his SONAR’s resolution, he was getting some odd noise. It was making the entire hallway blur as if it were filled with fog or static. It was too dark for him to see with even his precision telescopic vision, but his instincts were screaming at him to run, to just get the hell out of there now while he still could.

He held out for just a little while longer, hoping to get a better resolution on his SONAR. A few seconds later, his eyes widened and he began plotting his course away from the noise. He’d seen what was making it: a roiling wave of thousands of churning plasma cybercentipedes were crawling toward him and in their midst was the enormous head of another plasma cybercentipede Mother, its cybernetic mandibles scissoring in anticipation. He had to get to his room so he could blow up his windowall before the monsters overran the entire facility!