I couldn’t contain it any longer. I burst out laughing in their beaks. This had to be the dumbest IP adjustment of all… yet I hated that some sick sad part of me simultaneously thought it was cool.
“Are you laughin’ at me? Are you laughin’ at me?” The Falcon guy pointed a furious feathered finger at me, and the wings on his back shivered. “You’re just some wise-asp in boxers with a squid on your shoulder. You gonna show some respect, or do we gotta whack you?”
Silas jabbed a tentacle at him. “That’s Karjok, bub. Say it slowly with me: Kar-JOK. The human education system has failed this planet. In many ways.”
Honestly, I agreed with Silas on that front. I wiped a giddy tear from my eye, thinking I might be having a mental breakdown, even as I continued chuckling. I’ve never had one before, so I could only guess this was what they felt like. I almost preferred taking shrapnel to my abdomen.
“Now that’s what I expected from the laughing gas,” Silas remarked. “I didn’t know you could express joy, mate. That’s personal growth, even if it’s a slightly inappropriate time for it.”
“Oh, it’s not joy, Silas. It is so, so far from joy or anything approximating it. Now, fun as this is, need a ride or not? I got squid to stew.” I closed my eyes and gave another mirthless laugh at the filter’s correction. “I have things to do.”
The Falcon guy nodded. “Yeah, alright. We’ll take a ride. We got some business down in the industrial district, near the water treatment plant.”
“Heh, heh.” One of the others, the Osprey-headed guy, rubbed his feathered hands together. “Somebirdie will be sleeping with the fi—”
“Don’t say it, numb-spazz!” The Falcon guy smacked the back of the Osprey’s head. “Just get on the monogrammed cart-thing.”
“It’s a rickshaw, not to be confused with a nickshaw, a trickshaw, or an Erik Shaw,” Silas said.
At least they were heading where I was going.
But as I considered it, I squinted at them, wondering if that should concern me.
Then I shook my head. It was probably just a coincidence.
The Falcon adjusted his bow tie and motioned to the others. The four of them loaded up in the rickshaw, and I hurried them to the destination.
“What game are you playin’, gavone?” the Falcon asked. “Everybirdie else has a car. And why the flock aren’t you wearin’ pants? You some sorta fennel seed?”
I bristled at his comment, though I didn’t understand the last part. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Within minutes, we’d reached the industrial portion of Seaboard City, vibrant and saturated with colors to give it more appeal. And unlike the equivalent in real-life Seaboard City, it didn’t smell like a paper mill.
I dropped off the Godfeathers outside a warehouse labeled “Elanders Americas,” collected $300 AllCash and 200 XP. I looked over the field of concrete, basins, tanks, and buildings. I pulled the rickshaw farther down the street as I searched, then I saw a door labeled “Water Treatment Plant,” and I started to message Brandon to inform him I’d arrived.
Pop! Pop-pop-pop!
I ducked out of reflex and covered my head. Was that more gunfire? Had I entered another war zone?
“They’re about to whack someone!” Silas cried, emulating an old-timey brogue. “Some human dame with legs for days… even if there’s only two of them!”
I twisted my face. “Why are you talking like that?”
Stolen story; please report.
The rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns joined the intermittent cracks of pistol-fire, and I scanned the area behind me for the source of the sounds. First, I noticed random feathers floating through the air in the distance, but then my eyes nearly rolled out of my head. The Godfeather Players were indeed shooting revolvers and Tommy guns at an ashen-haired woman running away from them.
I recognized her immediately. She was the same girl who’d taken my Jonesin’ gear right after I’d gotten it. But that’s not what she was wearing now.
Instead, she wore attire reminiscent of a hipster cosplaying as a punk: a white cropped shirt with crazy logos, high-waisted blue jeans with holes in the knees, and red Converse shoes. The strip of brown hair she’d attained when she’d stolen my gear was now blaze-orange, and her whole outfit seemed splattered with varying colors of neon spray paint.
She darted from different areas of cover to avoid the Godfeathers, working her way around, over, and through the various circular structures and buildings with a ridiculous—bordering on unnatural—level of parkour skill, but she had no weapons and no apparent defense against their guns.
“You flank the dame, then we’ll ice her!” the Falcon-headed bird guy shouted.
The Kestrel and the Osprey parted from the others, and their wings unfolded from their backs, flapping. While still holding their guns, they fluttered up and after the girl, albeit nowhere near as fast as a real bird could fly.
I could already tell they’d eventually corner her anyway.
I grinned. The scales of justice were finally balancing for that class-stealing witch.
“Well, there you go, sweetheart. You’re about to be bird food,” I said, smug and loving every second of it. “Hm… that sounded funnier in my head. I think I’m losing my edge in this shellhole. Better get out while I still can.”
I reached for the door to enter the water treatment plant, when—
SMACK.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“What’s the matter with you?” Silas had walloped me again. “The lady needs a hand. She’s innocent and about to get iced, according to avian mobsters!”
“Silas, she’s hardly innocent. She nearly got me killed when the AllVerse launched. She took my Jonesin’ gear and left me for dead. I’m just returning the favor. I’d scrap her myself, but watching bird-themed mafia guys chasing her with guns somehow makes this way better.”
Silas flung four tentacles up. “She didn’t kill you, though! And by the sound of it, she could’ve, too. When we met, even I considered just putting you outta your misery. You were such a sad sack, but I helped you instead. The Painbow Seven guy could’ve killed you, and I saved you, again. The grenade could’ve, Todd could’ve, Bernie could’ve—”
“I get it! Shut the finch up. No one crosses me and gets away with it. Remember that. I—” I blinked at him. “Wait, you considered trying to kill me?”
“It crossed my mind. Like a fish with its fins ripped off, sometimes you’ve gotta do the hard thing.” Before I could digest his confession, he added, “But you weren’t far enough gone, and now here we are. Despite your sour disposition, overall, I’m glad it’s gone this way.”
Overhead, the woman slid across a steel railing between two buildings as though her shoes had wheels, but a bullet clipped her side. She yelped, clutching her sparkling wound, and fell from the beam. Despite the damage, she deftly parkoured her way down the side of the building and disappeared into a network of large brick pillars adjacent to the water treatment plant.
Silas tapped his chin with a tentacle, and the worry in his ocean eyes heightened. “She doesn’t look so good. Are you… really gonna leave her to this fate? Players don’t come back, mate.”
“Look, it’s not like I—” I rolled my eyes. “Did you just intentionally rhyme?”
“Neptune’s finger-snails, everything I do is intentional. Don’t be thick. You’re really gonna let someone possibly die just for a little revenge?”
My lips parted, but the words caught in my throat. I touched my abdomen, remembering that horrific coldness, and also the inane last words of MeatPopsicle.
What if this were life or death? What if I’d… killed someone already? Or two people, if I counted the lizard-guy whose head I’d crushed before he’d even gotten a class. Okay, three, including the Painbow Seven kidult I’d blown away with my AMR…
I’d done some heavy things to get where I was in life—in real life—but I’d never physically harmed anyone. Except for when I punched Timmy in the face, but we were five and he was a tool who wouldn’t share his fire truck, and he probably didn’t even remember now. It was literally twenty-one years ago.
“Mate, now’s the time if you’re gonna do something!”
Gunfire rattled again, sparking off the brick pillars where the ashen-haired woman was hiding. As she scurried from her diminishing cover to a better location, she took a bullet to the arm, and sparkles flowed from the wound. She dropped into a slide behind a forklift and scampered for cover among a cluster of tall white tanks.
The Godfeathers hurried in, sensing the kill was near, but their weapons must’ve been empty because they produced baseball bats with nails in them instead.
“Mate, she’s cooked!” Silas cried.
I gritted my teeth. I could either get inside the water treatment plant and potentially leave this place for good, or I could get myself killed trying to help someone who had scammed me and left me for dead.
This was the most obvious choice in the world.
I left my rickshaw behind and reached for the water treatment plant door.
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break--Royal Road. They call us the Critical Hitters.
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Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.
