The Misfits meet System-san

Alice and Bronsen:

"Say, what was that motion?" said Alice.

Something moved inside. Then it came outside. Four metres long, two metres high, covered in sandy yellow fur, forward-pointing horns on its head, and a large mouth lined with teeth ten centimetres long. A lot of teeth. All razor-sharp.

Ding! [Strength], [Speed] and [Toughness] all increased by 10 from Locked Points. It isn't a good idea to blithely go near any old cave in the wilderness, you know. On second thoughts, let's increase [Toughness] by another 20 points.

This status screen appeared, then rapidly disappeared. Meanwhile, both Alice and Bronsen were screaming. So was the horned cougar, except its scream was from anger, not scared shitless fear. As the cougar leapt out of the cave entrance, it rotated its head so that its teeth were nicely aligned with Alice's midriff, then took a huge bite. Alice screamed even more, but weirdly enough, the bite didn’t go through. There wasn’t even any blood. She was merely clamped into place by all of those teeth and bruised as hell.

Not liking her refusal to be bitten in half, the cougar landed with its two front paws on the ground, twisted and turned and rammed Alice against the cliff wall. The air was knocked clear out of her lungs, thus cutting off her screaming. It also pushed her arms and head to the animal's neck. She wrapped her arms around its neck, locked her hands together, and pulled.

The cougar got angry at this. It opened its mouth and roared out in fury. This action released Alice's body, but she still held on to its neck. The cougar vigorously shook its head side to side, thus whiplashing Alice's body side to side, hitting the cliff face and the ground at the end of each swing. Alice hung on for dear life and kept on squeezing its neck.

Meanwhile, Bronsen had tried to kick and punch the cougar's side. But the cougar swiped him away, its long claws raking across Bronsen's body and incidentally removing even more of his remaining clothes. Eventually, Bronsen copied Alice's manoeuvre and wrapped his arms around the cougar's front leg. Bronsen's legs were free, so he kicked as hard as possible whenever they got near the cougar's body.

The cougar escalated its attempts to get free of the two hangers-on by convulsively jerking its body around, slamming the humans against the ground or cliff, crashing its entire weight against them and trying to crush them, and continually raking them with its free paws.

All that Alice and Bronsen were aware of was a blur of motion as the ground and sky and the cougar's body thrashed all over the place. They just hung on and kept on doing their thing. Then things got a lot worse; the cougar's body was leaping up off the ground, so energetic was its motions. Shortly after, it slowed down and came to a complete stop.

In the sudden silence, Alice kept on squeezing. Until Bronsen, on the other side of the animal from her, crawled over it and up to Alice.

“Alice..."

"What?"

"I think you can let go now."

"Oh, right."

She let go. The dead weight of the animal's neck was trapping her left arm. She pulled it out. She sat back on her bum, right up close to Bronsen. They wrapped their arms and tails around each other and wailed their eyes out.

Ding! You have been rewarded 55 points for killing a Horned Cougar. You have demonstrated admirable courage, not to mention recklessness, in tackling a mid-rank predator bare-handed barely an hour after arriving in a completely new world!

Perhaps next time, don't be so hasty?

This communication pushed Alice over the edge. She opened her mouth and screamed out her rage.

"This is all bullshit! Why couldn't you have warned us!"

She held onto Bronsen as tightly as she could manage. Considering the sheer strength she had just displayed, it was just as well that Bronsen had exactly the same strength and toughness that she did. Otherwise, Alice would have crushed him to death.

"Just take us back home! This place is horrible!"

Snow kept falling; little snow heaps were on their heads and shoulders. The dead cougar was also slowly getting covered in a thin layer of pure white. The sky continued being a dirty, dull grey with no signs of clearing. Fortunately, there were also no signs of the sky darkening, so it must still be daytime. And Alice kept on freaking out.

"Please! Let me go! I want my mother!"

She sobbed, her head on Bronsen's shoulder. Bronsen hugged her back and also cried.

Sigh. Don't expect to be mollycoddled. There are high expectations for you two, and you need to shape up.

"I don't want to shape up! I want to go home and get Mum to hug me! All of this is just so much bullshit!"

Of course, it's bullshit. It's the Misfits rule number 2, remember? It's part of the contractually obligated agreement between the Misfits and System-san.

You're going to get a lot of it!

Alice:

Alice's emotions were completely out of control. A hurricane of feelings roared through her consciousness; a searing firestorm swept through her, every nightmare creature she had ever imagined, every terror that lurked deep down in her subconscious; they all came out of the darkness, bared their teeth, and started drooling all over her mind.

Ding! [Emotional Control] was added, with an automatic allocation of 12 points.

And the storm within Alice died away. The intrusive memories and feelings, the nightmare creatures and terrors, all shrank and crept out as if they were embarrassed for kicking up such a fuss. Alice's rational mind took over.

"Well, that's something," said Alice in a perfectly normal voice.

Amazing. The worries and fears are still there; even the desire to hug Mum is still there. But I'm no longer overwhelmed by them. And Bronsen also looks sane and under control.

Alice and Bronsen:

"Bronsen? Did you get [Emotional Control]" said Alice.

"Yes? I mean, yes, so I'm OK. Now,” said Bronsen.

"Good. We need to get shelter, food, clothes, and, well, with all of this snow, getting water shouldn't be much of a problem, and, and..."

"We also need protection from other animals; after all, this Horned Cougar is apparently only a mid-rank predator," said Bronsen.

"Oh, and do you realise that we are now both naked? And covered in blood from countless cuts," said Alice.

Bronsen gave a brief look at his body. And at Alice's body. And also the surrounding area.

"Yeah. You can see the scraps of our original clothes everywhere."

"You realised I spent half of my savings buying that outfit just for our expedition to the amusement park?"

"No? I just wore my usual casual clothes."

"Stupid male..."

"And, pink panties with red hearts?"

Alice invisibly blushed and looked away.

"Well, you never know when some particular boys might see them..."

Big sigh from Bronsen, "A shame we never got to that stage, and right now..."

Alice decided to get in first, " But let's defer any discussion about such things until we are safe, shall we?"

"Yes, let's," said Bronsen, “ Also, we have lots of cuts, but they don’t seem serious, so let’s also ignore them for the time being.”

Bronsen looked around again. It was still the same dreary scene of bare trees, snow-covered boulders, a dead cougar, and a cave entrance.

"First step, shall we investigate the cave?"

Very cautious of the fact that there might be more savage animals inside, they carefully crept in.

"Hey, it's spacious!" said Bronsen.

Inside was a flat, sand-filled floor, a rock ceiling three metres above, and ragged, rough-hewn walls around. The area was roughly circular and about four metres in diameter.

"It's also surprisingly clean," said Alice.

There was a metre-high pile of bones to one side, all picked clean of any flesh. The sand in the rest of the cave was uneven and churned up from the cougar's paws but otherwise free from rubbish.

"I see that cougar was a bit of a hunter," said Bronsen.

"And he has been here for some time," said Alice.

"Eeek! That skull towards the bottom of the heap is human!" said Bronsen.

"Shit! It is! Well, I suppose it's not all the surprising; after all, it tried to eat me." said Alice.

"Let's not dwell on that, OK?" said Bronsen.

"That's interesting. There are no clothes or stuff, but there is what looks like a - collar?" said Alice.

Near the skull, a soft-looking black cord about a third of a metre long was on the ground. It had clips on both ends.

So, of course, Bronsen, without a moment's thought, poked it.

Ding! Slave Collar. Compels the wearer to do whatever the slave master tells them. Once the slave collar is around someone's neck, it can only come off with the death of the slave. If destroyed while a slave is wearing it, the slave dies immediately.

They both jumped back with alacrity and hugged each other.

There was swearing from both of them.

After a while:

"What - what do we do with that?" said Alice.

"Argh - we certainly can't leave it here!"

"OK. Come to think of it, we aren't leaving any of those bones here. How about we snag the collar on the end of a loose bone and take it outside?"

In half an hour, it was done. The collar was safely deposited in a crevice between a large bolder and the cliff face, a hundred metres from the cave entrance. As for the bones, Alice and Bronsen indiscriminately tossed them around on the ground near the boulder. Except for the skull. It was buried in a small hole. As for the rest of the skull's skeleton?

Out of the pile of bones, they couldn't tell which were human and which weren't. So they gave up on that one.