NOVEL WEB Chapter 17: Unseen Assailants
Time left until monsters respawn: 4 hours, 11 minutes.
We get through the rest of the electronics maze without much trouble. At the end of it, well, technically the beginning, we see an escalator going up. We check it quickly and think it leads to the backstock areas. No use going there unless you need extra deodorant and office supplies.
There are two paths leading forward, one through seasonal (summer patio furniture) and one through the drugs and medicine section. The patio area looks wide open while the drugs section looks like a series narrow, easy to get ambushed in zigzagging isles. We take the patio section.
The seasonal area is dotted with tables with umbrellas, comfortable plastic chairs and gardening tools. We don't see hostiles, which is worrying. Jose takes a minute to convert more spikes to bullets and we fan out, as if making our way through forest or jungle terrain.
I start scanning randomly to see if anything is amiss. The tables and umbrellas are normal. The plastic chairs are reasonably priced but not especially durable. The gardening tools are- “the tools!” I shout it too late as a weed puller flies through the air and stabs into Jose's right shoulder. He grunts, holds the wound with his left and fires the gun with his right. The bullet punches into the plastic handle and the tool becomes inert. I scan it.
Weed Puller. This object is the bastard son of a fork and a knife, featuring a long metal stick that ends in a two pronged fork. Retails at $9.99.
“It's... Not a creature?” I ask/tell him. I look and see pruning shears lifting themselves from the wall and heading towards me. I scan again. They're just regular shears. There's nothing on my radar either. Whatever it is can disguise itself even to my radar?
Jose asks, “Ghosts?”
“What? There's no such thing as ghosts!” I say as I cast a magic spell. Dark Mote homes in on foes, so I cast it twice and see what happens. The shears close in and the motes fly out. They impact with the air right behind the shears and green blood dribbles from nothingness.
“Ghosts!” Jose insists.
“No, they're just invisible!” I argue back. “Ghosts don't bleed.” I pull two Shadow Stabs up from the floor towards the bleeding thin air and am rewarded with an AYUU-UP sound and more green blood. The air shimmers and it's a friggin chameleon lizard man holding the shears. Jose pops it in the head and it collapses. “See? Lizard man. Not a ghost.” I scan the guy/girl/thing.
Chameleonian. A stupid lizard that got big and wants to eat bigger things in turn. You're bigger! Hey, it might want to eat you! By the way it has all of a chameleon's abilities.
I'm starting to wonder if the system would give the same snark and attitude to someone else with System Scan.
This System reflects the personality of the user to minimize information rejection and maximize information retention.
So, I am the asshole. Noted. Whatever, there's critters to kill! I pop out another Dark Mote. “These motes track foes but I gotta watch my AP this time.” I don't really have to justify my lack of mote spam to Jose. He nods.
A manual polesaw lifts off the wall and Jose blindly fires at it. The shot is incredible, and snaps the pole in half and causes the critter to bleed down what I'm going to assume is its chest. Jose fires another round and it goes down.
Just as we're feeling confident the entire wall of tools starts to move. There must be DOZENS of invisible Chameleonians. “Craaaaap Jose we need to go!” I turn to book it back to the electronics maze but Jose stands his ground. He fires carefully, hitting the handle of each tool he sees move. He fires 6 shots and misses a creature only once.
“Just fight the ones that bleed,” Jose says as he begins to reload. They start to converge on him and I dash over, knife extended in my left, and summon a Fire Bat for my right hand. I stab into the bleeding air and hit a Chameleonian. Knowing where it is I swing the bat and feel it connect. Then with a WHOMP I hear it fall. I move to the next floating blood spatter and thrust with the bat to connect, and then slash with the knife once I know where my target is.
This works really well for like 15 seconds and then the whole squad is on us. We're back to back, surrounded by flying shears, rakes, towels and hole diggers. Jose has finished his reload and opens up into the crowd (hopefully) and I make wide, sweeping strikes with the bat. I connect with one, then Lunge and stab, but I get beaten in the back by a shovel. Jose's bullets hit their marks, but these creatures take more than one shot to the body to kill. If he could land head shots this might not end in our deaths.
Hrm... I swing my bat, hit a dude and get stabbed by one of those lawn claw things. The uhhh invisibility is usually light refraction... Jose's gunfire blows away every spot that's already bleeding and 5 fall instantly. Light... I have light... I slash wildly with my knife. I feel it cut into flesh.
“Yellow Ray!” My hand, still clutching the bat, glows and a yellow beam shoots out, barely visible in the bright lights of the Get! store. And yet, there it is, a miracle. Where my light hits a Chameleonian it is refracted and leaves a sort of reverse shadow behind it. The outline of a lizard man is clearly visible. I can even make out the- BLAM!
The creature drops as Jose's bullet finds its head. I immediately turn and shine my light on the next lizard and BLAM! so I turn and BLAM! Just keep turning BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! All around us are lizard man corpses. I still swing the bat as wide as I can without hitting Jose, who has to reload again. I get a metal rake biting into my thigh. I swing and hit a monster. I feel a trowel dig into my gut. I stab back.
Jose spins the revolver chamber closed and I light up three Chameleonians, one after the other. His shots are quick and accurate. He's not even waiting for me to pick out a target anymore. He's shoulder to shoulder with me, his left arm holding the gun, he holds his hand right next to mine, tracking my movements so there's no lag between me finding a foe and him blasting it. We turn and get stabbed but we keep turning, firing, spinning, shooting, shining. We are a single unit of light and fire and blood and death and we will not be taken down here.
Jose's gun runs empty after a string of lucky free bullets from his Bullet Refund Program ability. But that's okay. There's just a single object floating next to me, someone trying to yank the rake out of my thigh. I feel the muscle and flesh tear but I'm beyond the pain right now. I am an adrenaline fueled avenger and I pounce on the creature, not even knowing where exactly its arms and legs end and its body begins. I'm on top of something invisible. I stab and stab and stab until the thing is covered in green blood and the thing stops being invisible and the thing is fucking dead.
I roar, yelling to whoever can hear me. “WE ARE GODDAMN RANGERS AND WE ARE DEATH INCARNATE!!!”
I breathe heavily, deeply. I open a bag of healing pretzels and begin to absorb too much salt. I get up off my knees and join Jose, who's sitting at a patio table in the corner of the room, away from the carnage.
He drinks water. I crack open another Dr Pepper. He looks at the water as if it's the first time he's tried it. “That's good water,” he says.
“The glacier stuff?” I say, wiping blood from my face with a sleeve. “Yeah, it's good.” I offer some pretzels. He reaches out with his right but it's covered in blood so he switches to his left. We sit there a while and recover.
We're both exhausted. We've been fighting for hours today. And we both got to work at 7 AM so “We've been up for... 27 hours?” I feel the exhaustion fall over me like a wave.
I look at Jose who's staring into a bag of Fritos. “I like chips but I want bacon and eggs,” he tiredly says.
“Yeah,” I mumble and chomp down on a second bag of pretzels. I look over at the lizards. “Let's just wait a bit and see how long it takes for the bodies to turn to loot on their own.” Jose nods. “For science.”
We sit in the patio chairs for 20 minutes. Then another 10. That's when the bodies disappear and we hear the clatter of coins hitting the ground. I turn and look. “Just coins,” I say, getting up.
“Fuck ‘em,” Jose says, getting up and turning to the hall which leads out of here.
We leave money on the floor for the first time. We have got to get the fuck out of this place.