Breach World Championship 2081 Part 4: Dam

It's. Technically. May. So I win. Ish. Finals fucked me and this one took forever. But it's summer now, so we should be good. If you think this entry was worth the wait, please consider becoming a patron. There are numerous benefits, including deleted content, information from my personal notes, and the right to have me critique your story, or write one for you according to your specifications.

            Ryan scanned the theater to see who else had been eliminated.  All four members of Ours is the Glory were still there.  Sad Cake Binge Gaming was still there, except for the Lyfe Jay had killed earlier.  Phoenix was missing its Clypeus.  All of We Rise as One and Dying Gravity were gone.

            Ryan thought about going back into virtual reality to watch the rest of the match, but there was something the lobby had that virtual reality didn’t: food.  Ryan had left his plate of pastries on the table down there, and he needed to get back down to them before anything happened to them.  He couldn’t let those go to waste.  He left the theater and headed for the lobby.  As he walked, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a stream of the Battle Royale match.

            Breach-bot’s technology allowed a more cinematic streaming experience than you could get from any other game.  Ryan held his phone’s microphone up to his mouth.  “What’s going on with Unbroken,” he asked.  He held his phone up as he walked downstairs.  The screen showed him a beautiful view of the fight.  Breach-bot was framing the shot for him.  Breach-bot piloted the camera anytime anyone streamed Breach.  He was a talented little director and showed every viewer a different version of the broadcast, depending on what he expected them to like.

            Even though it had been a few minutes, he chose to start Ryan’s playback at the moment he had died.  Breach-bot’s frame showed silhouettes of the remaining members of Unbroken, in stark shadow from the bright light of the fireball that had claimed Ryan and Joss’s lives.

//////////

            Like everything Jayden saw through Dash’s eyes, the explosion happened in slow motion.  First, thin streaks of fire shot like bottle rockets over the wall Avaggdon had made.  A cloud of dark gray smoke billowed up after them.  A fraction of a second later, the cloud ignited into a fireball.

            “Fuck,” Sophia said, slowly.  Not really.  Really Jayden was hearing her more quickly.  Dash’s perception of time was different from everyone else’s.  To everyone else, he was fast, but to him, it was everyone else who was slow.  Every second felt like ten to him, allowing him to run, dodge, shoot and think faster than anyone else could ever hope to.  Sophia’s voice was deep, and she seemed to take ten seconds to say that single word, yet Jayden had no trouble understanding her, and so long as he was in Dash’s body, it was easy to match the speed of her speech himself, ensuring that he’d sound natural to her.

            “We need to retreat,” Jayden said.

            Before turning to run away, Mitch tossed a bomb at the wall.  It fell at the wall’s foot.  Mitch held onto the detonator as he ran.  In the likely event that Reigning Fire lowered the wall to pursue them, they’d get a nasty surprise.  Hopefully, Mitch’s three remaining bombs would be enough to destroy the dam.

            Sophia gave herself a speed boost.  She was the slowest of the three, even after having her speed increased.  The other two had to slow down to avoid leaving her behind.  Jayden looked over his shoulder.  Ichaboth had flown over the wall and was chasing them.  Behind them, the wall lowered.  Ichaboth blocked Jayden’s view of the other two members of Reigning Fire, but when Mitch detonated his bomb, their monstrous slow-motion shrieks proved it had managed to harm them.  The shockwave even damaged Ichaboth as it impacted him, blowing him forward.  Jayden could capitalize on that.  He pulled out his mini-flamethrower and ran up to Ichaboth.

            As he approached, Ichaboth reshaped itself to try to envelop him, yet it did so with a listlessness that made it easy to avoid.  Jayden fired his flamethrower into the monster and dashed away from it before it could retaliate.

            He ran with his team for several seconds, then dashed back to the Ichaboth, and shot it again.  The monster retreated.  Jayden could have pursued it, but it would have made it back to its team before Jayden could kill it.  The monster ran back to his teammates.  Huel-drark wasn’t among them.  He probably hadn’t split off from the rest of the team as part of some stratagem, so there was a good chance Reigning Fire was down a teammate.  Had Ryan managed to take Joss down with him?  If that turned out to be the case, Jayden needed to buy Ryan a drink or something for managing that.  Once you were down a teammate, you weren’t likely to win a Battle Royale match.

            Of course, that applied to them too, but if they could destroy the dam, that wouldn’t matter.

            Unbroken ran until they were sure Reigning Fire wasn’t following them, and then stopped.  “So that was a bust,” Sophia said.  “Where do we go from here?”

            “Not much has changed,” Jayden said.  “If anything, stealth has gotten easier for us.  We’re headed for the dam.  Hopefully we can get to the top of it without Ryan.”

            “I’m not sure we should be headed toward an obvious landmark,” Mitch said.  “Other teams may have had this same idea.”

            “All the more reason not to waste any time getting there,” Jayden said.  “We can’t let another team destroy the dam before us.”

//////////

            “Not much has changed,” Jay said.  “If anything, stealth has gotten easier for us.”  That statement made Ryan realize that knowing they were safe was enough, and there was no need to continue watching.  He turned off his stream as he entered the ballroom.  A dozen television screens scattered around the room, each with a group gathered in front of it, showed footage of the match.  Before doing anything else, Ryan walked over to the couches where his team had had their strategy discussion.  His pastries were still there.  He grabbed them and shoved one into his mouth.

            Each of the twelve TV screens had a smaller screen above it that indicated which version of the stream that screen showed.  Breach-bot normally made a custom stream for every viewer.  Most of the time, someone would watch a stream on their own phone or computer.  When that happened, Breach-bot would use the information on those devices to figure out what content would most interest them, and how they would most enjoy having it shown to them.  At a party like this, though, people wanted to watch the game together, which meant they had to be looking at the same stream.  Because there needed to be multiple screens regardless, having different version of the stream on each TV was a compromise.  Each stream was set up to conform to a different set of tastes.  There was one set up for fans of each of the remaining teams.  Epidemic’s was in the corner.  Three middle-aged couples watched that screen intently, along with a handful of other fans.  Unbroken’s screen was next to it.  It had a few fans in front of it.  One of them was cosplaying as Dash.  No doubt it would be a pleasant surprise for them if Ryan were to stop by.  Ryan started to go over there, but he stopped in the middle of the room.  He should go get some punch first.

            Sad Cake Binge Gaming had a large crowd in front of their screen, though they were paying less attention to the stream than they were to the eliminated Lyfe, who was mingling with his fans.  Pheonix’s screen had a lot of people in front of it, including two members of We Rise as One.  The screens for Ours is the Glory and Reigning Fire were on opposite sides of the hall.  Ryan was pretty sure Ours is the Glory’s screen was a bit bigger than the others, and Reigning Fire’s was a bit smaller.  Luciana Turner, the CEO of Thunderware, and her husband, were watching the Ours is the Glory stream.

            The other streams were organized around interests other than specific teams.  Two screens were dedicated to the General stream, the one Breach-bot constructed to be viewed by default, without making any assumptions about the viewer.  Another pair of screens was dedicated to the Cinematic stream.  This one was like the General stream, except in Cinematic, Breach-bot was instructed to sacrifice realism for entertainment.  He could alter the lighting in an area, speed up and slow down the action, and alter the order of events, all with the aim of making the stream more entertaining.  He would also replace the player’s in-game chat with dialog fitting the personas of the characters they were playing.  Many people found the existence of Cinematic mode abhorrent, but the crowds in front of those two screens testified to the stream’s popularity.

            For those who couldn’t stand the thought that what they were watching was anything less than the pure, unaltered truthful light of truthfulness, Realistic used non-cinematic filmmaking, wider, blander shots, no color alteration, and minimal cutting.  Only one screen showed this version.  Three people were watching it.

            Ryan headed toward the less crowded of the two Cinematic screens, punch and pastries in hand.  There were two couches in front of this screen, both full.  In front of that, there were some beanbags.  Ryan plopped down onto one of those.

            On the stream, the three remaining members of Phoenix were fighting Epidemic.  Ryan bit a pastry open and squeezed its chocolate filling into his mouth.  The screen showed a close-up of Phoenix’s team captain, playing as Tharthan Azotum, a twelve-foot muscular tank of a humanoid who wore intricate white armor and wielded a glowing white Warhammer large enough that even he had to hold it two-handed.  His teammate, a Canticum, sang behind him, empowering him with her magic song.  Tharthan charged at Epidemic’s Mog’Inub, his hammer in the air.  Behind him, his other teammate, Terraemotus, who could manipulate the ground like Avaggdon could, stomped, causing the ground below Tharthan to shoot upward and launch him into the air.  He flew forward pulling his hammer back for a strike.  He landed on Mog’Inub and slammed his hammer into one of her countless eyes.  He dropped to his knees and grabbed the now-blinded eye’s lower lid.  He was right to do so.  Mog’Inub began to shake, and rock from side to side, trying to force its foe off its body, but the monster was less mobile than he was strong, and he maintained his grip.  Terraemotus tried to summon forth spikes of earth to pierce the monster, but Epidemic’s Avaggdon was plugged into the ground, and held it in place.  Ichaboth rushed toward Tharthan and settled on top of him.  Breach-bot cut to a tight shot of Tarthan’s face, smirking.  He pulled out a cleansing light and crushed it.  The explosion of light summoned shrieks from both Gray Fungi, causing Ichaboth to shrink to a fraction of its former size, and making Mog’Inub fall limp.  In a panic, Ichaboth expanded, which, because he was a cloud caused him to rocket upward.

            The camera shifted between Terraemotus and Avaggdon as they abandoned their psychic battle over the ground.  Aveb-heth, Epidemic’s support character, fled into the woods.  Terraemotus summoned a wall to stop Aveb-heth from escaping, while Tharthan Azotum charged Avaggdon as it slowly waddled away.  He smashed his hammer into the monster.  A huge chunk of the soft creature’s flesh was ripped away.  Canticum, while continuing to sing, charged at Aveb-heth and grabbed her by the neck.  The monster squealed and kicked as Canticum spun around and tossed her into the wall.  Tharthan took another swipe at Avaggdon, but the monster jumped out of the way, only to be impaled by an unexpected spike from Terraemotus.  The spike pinned it in place, and before Avaggdon could plant itself to remove it, Tharthan smashed it to pieces.

            Tharthan dashed over to the wall, where Aveb-heth had just stood up.  She ran to the left, but Tharthan caught up to her in a single stride and grabbed her, throwing her against the wall.  He leapt forward and smashed her head in.  It splattered, spraying the area with infectious fungal juices.  Terraemotus lowered his wall, and Phoenix looked around for Ichaboth.  He was nowhere to be seen.

            Breach-bot cut to Ours is the Glory.  They were in a cabin.  Max’s Ocillo stood in front of a brown leather couch.  Armigeri stood beside him.  Their Terraemotus was behind the couch, connected to the ground via a hole he’d torn in the flooring.  Nullum was outside, visible through a large window that reminded Ryan of the glass walls of Max’s mansion.  On the floor, a Terran Navy Admiral, was tied up and gagged with dark blue, glowing rope.  Was that the Admiral from the mission briefing?  The cabin was wrecked from a fight.  The remains all four members of Dying Gravity were scattered around the room.  That team’s Lyfe was impaled on Max’s sword.

            Max was speaking.  Perhaps he was really talking about something else, but dialogue Breach-bot assigned him for the purposes of Cinematic mode revealed that Ours is the Glory had been sent to capture the same man Ryan’s team had been sent to kill.  It seemed they had actually bothered to do so.  They intended to take their prisoner to a rallying point near the dam, where they expected an Iron Star ship to be ready to pick him up.

            Outside, Nullum snorted like a bull and looked around.  The rest of Ours is the Glory abandoned their conversation and looked out the window at him.  Something startled Nullum, and he leapt backward, his long, reptilian tail crashing into the window and shattering it.  He was staring at something in the distance, but the others couldn’t see what.  Max walked toward him.  “Easy, boy,” he said, holding out his hand.  Armigeri left the cabin through the front door.  Nullum screeched and bucked backward.  “Eas—” Max began.  Nullum turned around and jumped into the cabin through the broken window.  Max dodged to his left, toward the front door, and Terraemotus dodged to the right, toward the back of the cabin.  The camera panned to reveal the cause of this disturbance.  In the distance, Spukee’s maggot-infested raven.  Nullum stampeded through the room and crashed through the opposite wall, blowing a massive hole into it.  As he ran into the distance, the building creaked, and before Max and Terraemotus could stand, the building fell on top of them, not killing them, but trapping them under the rubble.  Outside, as Armigeri ran away from the raven, Sord appeared behind him and stabbed him in the neck.  This broke the fear debuff, but right as Armigeri turned around to retaliate, a hole opened underneath him and he fell in.  Sord flew off, and Spukee flew into the hole.  Spukee wasn’t normally worth much in combat, but if he was alone with a single victim, out of sight of everyone else, he received a buff that made him much more powerful.

            A circular wall of earth shot up from the ground around the buried Terraemotus and flew outward, forcing the rubble away from him.  This worked, until a wall of force appeared in the path of one part of the wall of earth reflecting it and the rubble it was carrying.  The rock and rubble hurdled toward the still-buried Terraemotus, striking the creature, damaging it heavily, and launching it into the air.

            Spukee’s fear effect lost its grip on Nullum, and the beast turned around and charged toward the rubble of the fallen cabin.  When it reached it, it lit it on fire.  That wouldn’t harm Max, because members of the Legion of the Iron Star were immune to fire, but it might help clear the rubble.  The beast then turned its attention skyward, in search of a Pickcei to assault with its fire breath.

            Terraemotus lumbered to its feet and also headed toward the rubble.  There was a close-up shot of Max struggling beneath it, and then another close-up on a small section of the rubble moving to betray his location.  Terraemotus summoned a pillar from the ground at that spot.  Max was lifted into the air, along with the small portion of the rubble that happened to be right on top of him.  Some of that fell away, but he was still trapped under what remained.  Sord appeared near the pillar, on the opposite side from Nullum.  Terraemotus made a spike shoot out at Sord from the pillar, but the creature ducked below it.  Nullum charged the other side of the pillar, managing to knock some rubble off the pile.  Sord darted out of the way of that too.  Nullum stepped back a few paces, preparing another charge.  Spukee emerged from Armigeri’s hole, cackling and holding the creature’s helmet.  He flew toward Nullum.

            “Nullum, close your eyes!” Terraemotus shouted.  Both Nullum and Terraemotus did so.  Spukee summoned another raven, but neither of them saw it and it faded away after a few seconds.  While Terraemotus’ vision was obscured, Sord teleported away from the pillar and appeared above him, then stabbed him through the top of his head.  By the speed of his reaction, that must have been what Terraemotus was expecting.  He reached up, grabbed Sord, and broke the Pickcei over his knee.  The fairy went limp.  Terraemotus tossed his remains aside.

            With one final heave, Max forced the last of the debris off himself.  He stood and looked around, drawing his sword.  He saw Nullum below him.  “Hold on, boy,” he said.  He jumped onto the beast, settling in his saddle and riding away from the rubble.  He rode his steed around the clearing, keeping his eyes skyward.  He hadn’t found anything by the time Terraemotus made it back to where they’d been.

            “Brother, I think they have escaped,” Terraemotus said.

            “I don’t want to give up yet,” Max said.  He searched the clearing for a few minutes more, before letting out a cry of frustration.  He rode Nullum back over to Terraemotus, and conceded the fact that the Pickceiz were, indeed, gone, then lamented that their mission to capture the Admiral had been thwarted.  He had, of course, not survived the collapse of the building he was in.  They had a fresh conversation about what to do.  The subject of the dam came up.  Apparently, Unbroken hadn’t been the only ones to speculate that it could be destroyed.  “It would be an impressive thing to accomplish,” Terraemotus said.

            “Reason enough by itself to do it,” Max said.  He dismounted Nullum and allowed Terraemotus to mount him.  Having the slower Terraemotus ride Nullum would allow them to make better time.

            The camera cut to the fleeing Cloun and Spukee.  They were both badly hurt.  They’d lost their Lyfe during their encounter with We Rise as One and Unbroken, and so neither of them had healed since that first match.  They knew they wouldn’t be around much longer.  Their conversation was about how to go out on a suitably amusing note.

            “We haven’t done anything to the Gray Fungi, yet,” Spukee said.  “They’re easy to find, what with the trail of mushrooms they leave everywhere.”

            “Yeah, and they’re pretty powerful,” Cloun said.  “It’d be awesome to take them down a peg.”

            “Definitely.  Let’s do it.”

//////////

            Unbroken was now close enough to the dam that it seemed to loom over them.  Jayden couldn’t see any way of making ingress, but it was the dead of night now, and the dam was still far away.  Besides, there had to be some way in.  Near the top of the dam, evenly spaced from end to end, were artificial waterfalls flowing down the dam’s surface and into a pond at the base of the structure.  There was a one in a million chance those waterfalls were just decorative, but far more likely, their passage through the dam was being used for hydroelectric power.  If the machinery to do that was in the dam, there would have to be a way inside so it could be maintained.  Considering the waterfalls were near the top of the dam, that way in probably was as well, meaning that what they were really looking for was an elevator.  Accordingly, Jayden was leading his team to the far east side of the dam, which he calculated was the most likely place for such an elevator to be.  The west side would have been equally valid but was farther away.

            Jayden smelled something.  He stopped walking.  Crap.  “Spores!” he said.  The rest of the team stopped as well.  An Ichaboth emerged from the trees to their right and flew toward Unbroken.  They activated their masks.  Jayden pulled out his flamethrower and ran toward the monster.

            “Has Reigning Fire been following us this whole time?” Sophia asked.  It would be a strange thing for them to do.  Jayden blasted the monster with his flamethrower as soon as he reached it, then dodged back to avoid a counterattack.

            “That doesn’t sound right,” Jayden said.  “Maybe this is the other Ichaboth?”

            “Epidemic’s?” Sophia said.  “Their Mog’Inub isn’t around.”

            “Maybe it was killed.”  It would make sense for Ichaboth to be the only Gray Fungus to escape a lost battle.

            This Ichaboth didn’t retreat from Jayden’s hit and run tactic like the other one had.  On the contrary, it was barreling toward the rest of Unbroken.  Mitch tossed a red disk onto the ground and it unfolded into a flame-throwing turret.  He used his jetpack to jump onto a nearby tree.  Sophia stayed near the turret, and Jayden retreated to her side.  No other Gray Fungi seemed forthcoming, so grouping together to tempt the Ichaboth into braving the turret’s damage was worthwhile.  It wouldn’t have any way of knowing about their masks, so it probably thought it would have a significant chance of infecting them and gaining itself a crop of new allies.  The turret fired on the Ichaboth as it enveloped them.  The creature’s shriek was horrible, and it was hard for Jayden to suppress the instinct to cover his ears.  They weren’t taking hit-point damage, so the monster must have been trying to infect them.  Sophia tossed a damage-boosting buff at Jayden, who turned on his flamethrower and ran outside the Ichaboth.  He fired on it, his flames glowing blue with the power of Sophia’s magic.  Ichaboth shifted to envelop him.  Jayden ran laps around the monster, just barely avoiding its edge.  The whole time, the flame-throwing turret ate it from the inside. 

            It was shrinking.  Soon, it realized that possibly infecting Sophia wasn’t worth taking more damage from the turret and it flew toward Mitch.

            Mitch flew away from the monster, boosting himself toward another tree with his jetpack.  Ichaboth followed him and enveloped him.  Mitch launched himself up to a higher branch, but he was followed and re-enveloped.  The Ichaboth’s maneuverability surpassed his.  Jayden dashed toward the two.  Sophia followed but couldn’t keep up with them.  Jayden reached Mitch and Ichaboth in seconds.

            Moving fast enough that his presence might not be noticed before he could get a hit off, he ran to the tree Mitch was flying toward.  He didn’t climb as fast as he ran, but he still reached the branch before Mitch did.  Mitch landed next to him, and Jayden shot at the approaching Ichaboth.  The creature screeched and recoiled.  He leapt after the creature and blasted it as he fell to the ground.  Mitch followed him down.  Sophia caught up to them and threw a speed buff at Mitch.  She missed.

            Ichaboth swerved downward, enveloping Sophia.  Jayden dashed over and blasted it.  The monster was small enough now that he couldn’t hit it without harming Sophia, but that was an acceptable loss.  The creature didn’t flee.  There wasn’t much of it left to flee.  As it shrunk, it moved upward to envelop Sophia’s head.  Jayden blasted her in the face to get at it, causing her to reel backward and fall on her back.  “Fuck!” she shouted.  The creature wasn’t even able to follow her down before the last puff of it was incinerated.

            Sophia took deep breaths.  She stood up.  “One percent,” she said.

            “Fuck,” Jayden said.

            Sophia took a deep breath.  “It’s alright.  Potion.”  She used her anti-infection potion and was restored to normal.  For now.  If they encountered Reigning Fire again later, her not having that potion would hurt them a lot.  Hopefully, though, their plan with the dam would work, and that wouldn’t be an issue.  Sophia got everyone healed up, and they resumed their march.

//////////

            The remainder of Sad Cake Binge Gaming had an easy time locating Reigning Fire.  The fungi left a gray scar in their wake.  Finding them was as simple as flying high into the air and looking around for that scar.  They found it at once.  Actually, they found two such scars, but one ended with a dead Mog’Inub, so they knew they wanted the other one.  The Mog’Inubless scar outlined a straight-forward path from a spot near the center of the valley to a spot near the dam.  The Pickceiz flew to the end near the dam, and there Reigning Fire was.  Xig’zah hopped from tree to tree, Avaggdon lumbered along the ground, and Ichaboth flew above them, keeping an eye on their surroundings.

            “Where the hell is Huel-drark?” Spukee asked.

            “He must have gotten offed,” Cloun said.

            “That sucks.”

            “Maybe it doesn’t suck that much.  Without his cannon, Ichaboth is the only one who can hurt us while we’re up here.”

            “Dude, we’re like, super injured.  We’ll die to a second of Ichaboth exposure.”
            “Oh, right.  Crap.  Who do you think offed him?”

            “Doesn’t matter now.  Could have been anyone.  The better question is: How do we prank these clowns?”  All three of the remaining characters had trivial ways of escaping a pit, and none of them could shoot projectiles, so Cloun’s reflective wall would be useless.

            “That’s a hard one,” Cloun said.  “I think your raven is the only thing they’ll be vulnerable to.  Maybe we can set up some kind of hazard to scare them into?”

            “That could work.  I’m not sure how we would set one up, though.  Maybe there’s something hazardous around here we could take advantage of?  Like that pit with the tentacles?”

            Cloun nodded.  “Yeah, like the pit.  Maybe we’ll even be able to find it again.  Split up and search?”

            “Sure.  Meet back at this exact spot.”

            They explored the area.  There was a pond back toward the center of the valley, which Reigning Fire had already passed.  In not-quite the same direction, there was a hill with a small cave in it.  Breach-bot showed Spukee exploring the cave.  He saw something inside, and Breach-bot cut to a close-up of his face, lit up with glee.  He rushed back to their appointed meeting place.  Cloun showed up a few minutes later.  The camera cut to a wider shot as Spukee explained what he’d found in the cave, then cut back to the tighter shot as Cloun sprung up higher into the air, chuckling joyfully.  The two agreed that they’d found their hazard.  Cloun zipped back over to the cave while Spukee zipped down toward Reigning Fire, deliberately attracting Ichaboth’s notice as he flew through the tree line.  The creature fell for it.  it followed Spukee below the tree-line, joining both of its allies, ensuring all three of them could see the raven Spukee summoned.  They did.  They fled from it, directly toward the cave.

            Their vastly different speeds forced them to split up.  Xig’zah sped through the forest, effortlessly hopping from tree to tree.  Ichaboth lagged behind him.  As the cloud moved, he expanded and rocketed into the air.  Avaggdon waddled far behind the two of them.  It was only seconds before the Xig’zah was twice as far from the raven as he was.  Several seconds later, the spider was in sight of the cave.  Cloun, who was sitting on a nearby tree, waved at Xig’zah as it passed.  Xig’zah was just outside the mouth of the cave when the raven’s effect wore off.  The spider turned around and charged toward Cloun.  The Pickcei darted into the air and pulled an air-horn out of his jacket.  HONK!  Xig’zah probably realized something was going on, but he didn’t abandon his pursuit of Cloun.

            The ground shook.  Out of the cave charged a monster with dark green fur.  The thing looked like a giant green bear, with dagger-long claws and snaggled teeth.  It rushed at Xig’zah as Cloun flew into the air to join Spukee, laughing.

            Ichaboth condensed and rushed toward Xig’zah.  Both of them, in turn, rushed toward Avaggdon, who lumbered toward the rest of his team.  As soon as they were close enough, Avaggdon plugged into the ground and raised a wall of earth between them and the monster.  The animal bashed into the wall.  It didn’t even shake.  The beast tried again, and again, but it couldn’t break the wall. 

            Had it been a little smarter, it might have thought to go around the wall.  Given how thick the wall was, it probably wouldn’t have to go far.  Avaggdon and Terraemotus could only displace a certain volume of earth.  Once it became clear that the monster wasn’t coming for them, Reigning Fire allowed themselves to catch their breaths.

            “Rats,” Spukee said.  “Is there any way of salvaging this one?”

            “I’m not sure.  Not without getting rid of that wall.  Should we lead the critter somewhere else?”

            “Where?  I don’t think any of the other teams are close enough for that.”

            “Rats.”

            Avaggdon spun, and two sharp, thin stone pillars shot up from the ground.  Cloun, who had been facing Reigning Fire and so had seen Avaggdon spin, dodged to the left.  Spukee was impaled.  He went limp.  Cloun dashed away.  “Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap!”  Ichaboth flew upward and barreled toward Cloun.  Spikes were shooting up all around the fairy.  One shot up just to his left.  Another right behind him.  Another rose directly in front of him, and he crashed into it.  Ichaboth was on him by the time he pulled himself away from the pillar, and it only took a second of exposure to the monster’s damaging vapors to end him.

            The camera followed his drained husk as it fell.  It landed in a tree, startling a flock of birds.  There was a fit of booing from the crowd in front of Sad Cake Binge Gaming’s screen as it switched to displaying the general broadcast.  Ryan ate his last pastry as the camera panned back to Reigning Fire and began to follow them as they moved through the forest, on their way to the dam.

//////////

            Unbroken reached the dam before anyone else.  There was an elevator upward, just as Jayden had hoped.  The mechanism was simple: a platform attached to a metal pole.  The platform was at the top, barely visible in the distance, when they arrived.  The mechanism to summon it had been disabled, perhaps by evacuating civilians, but it was a simple matter for Mitch to hack the device and re-enable it.  In the distance, the platform descended.  “And we’re sure there is going to be a way to burst it open?” Mitch asked.

            “Not completely,” Jayden said, “but even if Breach-bot didn’t build a way in deliberately, some well-placed explosives might manage it.  If we make any hole at all, the valley floods, and most of the other players die.”

            “Everyone who can’t fly,” Sophia said.  “That just leaves Pickceiz and Ichaboths.”

            Barring the ones he’d encountered, Jayden had no way of knowing which players were left and which ones had been eliminated, but presuming it was only flyers who had survived, the only remaining threats would be Sad Cake Binge Gaming, who’d lost their healer, Reigning Fire’s Ichaboth, who wasn’t much of a threat on his own, and Dying Gravity.

            The platform reached the bottom of the valley.  Unbroken stepped onto it, and Mitch activated it again.  It rose.  Jayden looked out over the misty, moonlit forest.  Not too far from the dam were the remains of a collapsed wooden structure.  Had there been a battle around there, or had that been that way when Breach-bot created the map?  If the former was true, at least one other team was close to the dam.  A bit further, Mog’Inub’s L-shaped body was lying on its side in a clearing.

            Jayden caught some motion in the corner of his eye.  He looked down.  In the moonlight, he could just see something like a patch of mist moving toward the dam.  Was it an Ichaboth, or just a random patch of haze?  He pointed it out to the others.  “Is that Ichaboth?”

            “It’s hard to tell,” Sophia said.

            They watched it for half a minute, but still weren’t sure what it was.  “If it is Ichaboth,” Jayden said, “we’ll just have to work fast once we’re up there.  Once we find the entrance, I’ll go in alone and search for a place to plant the bomb.  You guys stay outside and keep watch.  Call if you need me.”  He turned to Mitch.  “Once I find a place to plant the bombs, I’ll come back out and lead you right to it.  Once the bomb is planted, we’ll run to the valley wall.”

            By the time they reached the top of the dam, they could no longer make out the suspicious patch of mist.  They found an entrance hatch right away, and Jayden climbed inside.

            Normally, splitting up was a terrible idea, but Dash would be able to get back to his teammates in no time if they alerted him.  That same speed allowed him to survey the dam’s interior quickly.  He already had a likely weakness in mind.  He went straight to the mouth of the nearest artificial waterfall.  There, he found a facility filled with hydroelectric generators collecting power from the passing water.  They were large, impressive machines, rusty like Zap’s plating.  “I found a generator room by the nearest waterfall,” Jayden said.  He darted around the room, looking either for something that would amplify an explosion, or an obvious structural vulnerability.  He found neither.

            But there would be one below.  The generator was in this room, but the water itself flowed through pipes underneath it.  If the explosives could be placed in such a way that a pipe would burst, the water would escape into the rest of the dam, and the dam would probably fail.

            There had been a ladder outside the generator room.  As Jayden had hoped, it led him to a round, bulging wall.  Jayden put his ear up to it.  Water was flowing on the other side.  “Mitch, come down here,” Jayden said.  He did.  Mitch had three bombs left.  He planted all of them, setting them up so that he could detonate them remotely.

            “Guys, hurry up,” Sophia said.  “Ichaboth is at the bottom of the dam.”

            “We’ve got the bombs planted,” Jayden said.  “We’re coming right up.”  By the time they were up, the elevator platform was moving down.  Should they destroy it?  They should have done it earlier.  If they did so now, it would doubtless alert Reigning Fire to their presence.  Maybe that wasn’t a problem, though.  Ichaboth was the only one who could get up here without it, and he couldn’t take all three of them on at once.  “Mitch, toss a grenade on the elevator.”  He walked up to the edge where the dam overlooked it, and gently tossed a frag grenade onto it.  The grenade clattered as it fell onto the elevator.  The explosion tore the platform off of the rail it had been clinging to and sent it plummeting to the valley floor.  Unbroken walked off the dam and onto the cliff that overlooked the valley.  They wanted to get as far away as they could.  If water rushed through the gap where the dam was now, it could erode the land nearby.  Ichaboth emerged over the edge of the cliff but retreated as soon as it saw them.

            Once they had been running for several minutes, Jayden gave the order to blow the dam.  Mitch pressed the little green button on his detonator.  A fireball burst out from the dam, ripping a hole in it.  Water gushed through that hole like it was emerging from a faucet.  As it did, the force of the flowing water ripped the hole open wider, allowing more water to flow into the valley.

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Breach World Championship 2081 Part 3: The Spore

In contrast to the last one, this entry is after my self imposed deadline. Hopefully I don't make a habit out of this. Mid-terms fucked me up while I was writing the first draft of this. The good news is, I'm about to finish an online class I've been doing this semester, so my schedule will soon have some extra breathing room. I hope everyone enjoys the entry. If you do, please consider becoming a patron. There are numerous benefits, including deleted content, information from my personal notes, and the right to have me critique your story, or write one for you according to your specifications.

            Ryan and Sophia were still catching up—Ryan could have kept talking with her all night—when they heard a faint whirring by the door.  In flew a fist-sized red and white drone carrying a camera.  Following behind it, looking straight into the camera, was Marvin Blackwood, the captain of Sad Cake Binge Gaming.  Two more members of his team entered behind him.  They both had their own mini-drone: one blue and gold, one dark purple and black.  The drones were AI piloted and programmed to follow them around.  Presumably, they were using them to live-stream their entrance to the party.  “And here we are!” Marvin said into his camera.  He kept talking, but Ryan didn’t keep paying attention to what he was saying.  Max walked off the stage, where he had been dancing, and over to greet the entering team.  Sophia stared at them.

            “You’re thinking of pulling something?” Ryan said to Sophia.

            “More like daydreaming,” Sophia said.  “They’re good sports.  They can handle it.”

            Marvin went to the dance floor.  The other two headed toward the swimming pool.  Ryan wished he could use the pool himself, but he hadn’t thought to pack swim trunks.

            Ten minutes later, the music by the dance floor stopped, and Max’s voice rang out in its place.  “Hey, everyone, the annual Battle Royale game will begin in about twenty minutes.  Everyone should find their teammates and prepare to meet me in the lobby.”

            Ryan sighed.  “Do you think I can get away with not seeing Mitch until we’re in-game.”

            “No.”

            “You’re probably right.”  Ryan had agreed to come here.  He needed to think about Lisa.  He filled up his punch glass and packed some thickly sweet chocolate pastries onto a paper plate, and then he and Sophia made their way over to the corner where Jay and Mitch each had an arm around the other’s shoulder.  They adopted a chaster posture when they saw Ryan and Sophia approaching.  Ryan had expected some kind of glare from Mitch, but instead, the look on his face reeked of awkwardness.  He was shorter than any of them, including Sophia, and had neither a chin nor cheekbones.  He wore a gaudy light blue shirt under his jacket.

            “Hey, guys,” Sophia said, sitting down on the couch next to Jay.

            “Hi,” Mitch said.  Ryan took a seat on the chair next to the three of them.

            “Glad you guys came right over,” Jay said.  “We should spend a moment discussing strategy before the match starts.”

            “I guess,” Ryan said.

            Some things went unspoken.  They were playing Red Arachnia, which, in a Battle Royale match, was a very good thing.  Battle Royale matches differed from standard ones.  All eight teams would be set loose in one giant map, and they would go around trying to kill each other, with each player’s death eliminating them from the match.  Eventually, only one team would still have living members, and that team would be the winner.

            In this kind of match, it was normally a good idea to try not go get into too many fights, and of all the factions, Red Arachnia was the best at stealth.  They would have been even better off if they didn’t have Zap among them.  However, Zap could be stealthier than his size would lead one to expect.  He was immune to radar tools and wasn’t loud.

            Breach-bot would have designed the map so that hunkering down and hiding in one place would be unlikely to work, but that didn’t mean a stealth-oriented strategy couldn’t be effective.  If they played well, Unbroken could avoid fights, set a lot of traps, and wait around while the other teams killed each other off.  Of course, then they’d have to take on whoever was left, which would probably be one of the strongest teams in the match.  However, they’d go into that fight fresh, unlike their enemy.

            “Reigning Fire is obviously the biggest threat,” Mitch said.  “And since there’ll be another Gray Fungus in the arena along with them, we need to be very concerned about infection.”

            The other three agreed.

            “At the same time,” Jay said, “we don’t want to do anything that will slow the spread of infection in the arena.”  Infection was a status effect, meant to represent the Gray Fungus assimilating you into their hive mind.  Several of their abilities could affect you with it, and if they did, you would lose some control of your avatar.  If you tried to harm Gray Fungi, or help your teammates, there’d be a chance you’d seize up for several seconds.  If untreated, infection grew worse over time, and once it reached its final stage, you’d turn into an NPC drone, controlled by Breach-bot and allied with the Gray Fungus.  In a normal match, you’d then respawn as though you’d died.  Indeed, the infected often killed themselves to begin the respawn counter early rather than put up with the status effect.  In a Battle Royale, there was no respawning, so infection was all the more powerful.  As a robot, Zap didn’t have to worry about it, and Dash’s cybernetic components meant that he couldn’t be taken over completely, but for Mitch and Sophia it was a very serious hazard.

            However, Jay argued, if they made sure they were properly prepared to resist infection and then forged an alliance with one of the Gray Fungus teams, where they would help spread infection in exchange for being left alone, they would seriously harm the other teams.

            “I don’t feel like Reigning Fire would be up for an alliance like that,” Ryan said.

            “I see where you’re coming from,” Jay said, “but I think you’re wrong.  I take it you met Joss?”

            “Yep,” Ryan said.  “Would it be bad form to talk to Epidemic, or Reigning Fire I guess, out of game and coordinate this?” Ryan asked.

            “Probably,” Sophia said.

            “I’m not so sure,” Jay said.

            “Maybe you should ask Max,” Ryan said.

            “That would mean letting him know we’re doing it,” Sophia said.

            “If it’s allowed, most teams are probably doing it,” Jay said.

            “Fair point,” Sophia said.

            Jay rose from his couch.  “I’ll go find him.”

            He walked off.

            Mitch scooted away from the chair Ryan was sitting on and crossed his arms.  “Objectively, the second biggest threat is Ours is the Glory,” he said.  “But for us specifically, I think to us it’s a toss-up between Dying Gravity and Sad Cake Binge Gaming.”

            “Agreed,” Ryan said.  Sophia scooted closer to Mitch, as if to provide him moral support, and only then did Ryan realize what was going on.  He tried to think of something mildly encouraging but non-awkward he could say.  “Where Ours is the Glory and Pheonix are concerned, I think we just need to be careful to lay enough traps to keep them from fighting us at full strength.  That’s your job, of course.”

            “Right,” Mitch said.  “But back to the Pickciez teams.  Hiding from them is going to be a problem.  Do we have any particular strategies in mind.”  Pickciez were harder to hide from, because they were fast-moving and could search and area efficiently.

            “Be lucky, so they don’t happen across us” said Sophia.

            “That’s always plan A,” said Mitch.  “Failing that, though…”

            “Our best answer is probably raw power,” Ryan said.  “Especially if we have an alliance.”

            “And if we don’t?” Mitch said.

            “We can still probably take them in a straight fight, so long as they don’t catch us by surprise.  We just have to be wary enough not to let them sneak up on us.”

            “Stealthy approaches are sort of Sad Cake Binge’s whole thing.”

            “I’ll have my all-around vision.  Depending on the map, that’ll be enough on its own.”

            “I guess.”

            The conversation paused when they saw Jay coming back over to the couches.  “He said no,” Jay said as he sat down next to Mitch and grabbed his hand.

            “Drat,” Mitch said.

            Sophia told Jay what they’d said while he was gone, and by the time she was done it had been fifteen minutes or so since Max’s announcement.

            “Do we know where the bathroom is?” Ryan asked.

            “No,” Sophia said.

            Ryan stood up.  “Alright, I’ll see if I can find it.  I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

            “We’re cheering for you,” Sophia said.

//////////

            When he was finished in the bathroom, Ryan headed back to the ballroom.  He didn’t make it back to the couches before Max got back on the microphone and told everyone to gather in the lobby.  Ryan got together with his team.  All eight teams, save Ours is the Glory, gathered outside the door to the ballroom.  Ryan could identify the Epidemic kids by their age.  Only one of them had to be eighteen to force the team into the senior league, and it was easy to tell which one that was.

            We Rise as One stood next to them.  The youngest member of that team was middle aged.  They were also the best dressed.  Actual suits.  The only other people wearing those were the business executives and investors.  Dying gravity were dressed the most casually.

            “Thank you all for coming,” Max said from the top of the balcony that overlooked the lobby.  “And thank you for indulging this little tradition of mine.  I’m sure you know better than I do how much the fans love this.”  For just a moment, he looked directly into one of Sad Cake Binge Gaming’s camera drones.  “Please, follow me upstairs to the theater.  The helmets are in there.”

            The theater was large and dark, with eight rows of luxurious dark-grey leather reclining chairs.  They faced a large projector screen, like an old movie theater, but each one also had a holo-helmet built into its headrest.  Even all eight world championship teams would only take up half the seats.  Why did every chair have to have its own helmet?  When did Max use all of these at once?

            “Take your seats,” Max said, himself walking down to the front row and sitting on the rightmost seat.  Ryan took the closest seat to the entrance.  The rest of his team funneled in next to him.  Ryan reclined his seat all the way, then lowered the helmet over himself.  It fit over his head snugly, making physical contact with his neck and, microscopically, his spine, through which it would affect his brain.  He switched it on and closed his eyes.  The world around him faded all at once, like he was falling asleep, and a dream was beginning.  For a moment, he was weightless and blind.  Then, in an instant, the full proprioception of Zap’s body kicked in.  The sudden perception of weight made him stumble.  Once he’d gotten his balance, the black interior of a ship popped into existence around him, along with hum of electronics and the sound of working metal pipes.  The room was caked with rust, though the metal pipes in the corner seemed to have had recent maintenance.  Below Ryan, there was a red-brown metal floor.  Above him, bright strips of light on metal planks.  To his right and left, his teammates, each half his height: Sophia as Boost, Jay as Dash and Mitch as Spark.  Behind him, another wall with a manually-operated sliding door.  In front of him, a holo-terminal.  A hologram of Blast appeared in the center of the cabin.

            “Greetings, Comrades!” she said.

            “Hey,” Ryan said, in Zap’s robotic voice.

            “Greetings, Comrade Zap.  I hope you’ve all been enjoying your leisure time, but I’m afraid I must end it.  There’s a resort planet called Ju-Tai 2, and there’s a Terran general on it.  This is a particularly nasty one.  He once glassed a mining colony, killing about a thousand families, because he believed I was being harbored there.  I wasn’t, but I still took the gesture a bit personally.  The scumbag is allowing himself some R&R, because he doesn’t think we can figure out where he is.  We did.  He’s in a little cabin in a lovely valley.  Beautiful forests, and the most spectacular waterfall you’ve ever seen.  Shame to visit it with violence, but I think we’ll be doing the place a favor by scrubbing it free of this odious lump.  He’ll have a few guards, but I trust you can take care of that.  I’m sorry to send you on a mission with such little notice, but we only just discovered this opportunity, and we need to act now.  We don’t know when his vacation will end.  You will arrive there in a few hours.  Equip yourselves for the fight ahead, Comrades.  I’ll be in contact with you once you’re on the planet.”  Her hologram went away, and the four equipment selection terminals lit up.

            Ryan walked up to one.  As he chose his items, the main factor in his decision making was longevity.  This was going to be a long match, and he might get into several fights.  He would prefer to avoid choosing items he could only use a limited number of times.  His minigun would never run out of ammo.  He selected that.  His grenade launcher wouldn’t run out of its standard grenades, but it would run out of special grenades, including stun grenades, which were one of its main benefits.  “I’m going mini-gun and rocket launcher,” Ryan said.  Rockets were more accurate and did more damage than grenades.  With special grenades out of the picture, that made the rocket launcher a better choice.

            Ryan took two packets of healing potions hoping that would last him multiple combats.  The expandable shield was so broadly useful it was a must-have in any scenario, even though it was single-use.  Ryan also got a grappling hook.  “I have a grappler,” he told the others.  Him selecting that meant they didn’t need to.  He was large enough that they could all ride him while he climbed something.  Not needing their own grappling hooks meant they could use that slot for air filters that would prevent infection, or for the potion that healed it.

            When he was done selecting his tools, Jay had everyone list their choices.  Everyone agreed with Ryan’s decisions.  Mitch and Sophia made a few adjustments based on Jay’s advice.  Everyone but Ryan had an air filter and at least one anti-fungal potion.  Sophia had taken the spell that suppressed de-buffs.

            Jay told Breach-bot that they were ready.  Blast led them on a short walk through the ship to a hanger bay, where they boarded a landing craft.  Once the craft took off, they had nothing but a display screen through which to see the outside world.  Their ship had stopped at the edge of Ju-Tai 2’s solar system.  They traveled swiftly toward its center, passing a bright blue gas giant surrounded by three concentric rings.  Their destination came into view.  It was a tiny green dot.  They approached.  The planet looked like the earth, but with the blue and green switched.  They made contact with the planet’s atmosphere.  “You should be down there in just a few min—” Blast began, before being cut off by a burst of static.

            “Ma’am, you cut off,” Jay said.

            Another burst of static.

            A glob of Gray Fungal biomass came into view from the corner of the viewscreen, careened toward the ship and slammed into the hull, making the viewscreen go to static, and sending the lander tumbling end over end.  An alarm sounded.  Ryan grabbed Sophia, Jay and Mitch and held them to his person to keep them from tumbling around the ship and taking damage.

            “Warning, impact imminent,” said the ship’s computer.  Everything shook.  The lander roared down toward the planet’s surface.  A shield similar to Zap’s invincibility shield appeared around the four of them as their ship crashed into the valley.  The ship disintegrated around them, exploding, throwing their bubble off into the distance.  It hit the ground and popped, the four falling out onto a still clearing.  They were surrounded by the strange and varied chirping of alien crickets and the cawing and hooting of alien birds.  Ryan let go of his teammates.  All four of them stood.  Below Ryan was bright-green curly grass.  Above him was an open sky in the midst of a radiant pink and orange sunset.  Forest stretched off into the distance all around them.  The horizon was dominated to the left by a giant, black metal dam which seemed to seal off the bowl-like valley.  Blast’s voice echoed through Ryan’s head, fizzy and quiet.

            “…hostiles surrounding you, and we cannot retrieve you any time soon…” and with one last burst of static, she disappeared.

            Other than the forest, the main feature of their surroundings was a small dusty cabin, the size of a single room.  “Do you think the General is going to be important?” Mitch said into his helmet’s communicator.  His helmet was sealed, so if there were any enemies around, they wouldn’t overhear him.

            “Probably, or he wouldn’t have been mentioned,” Jay said.

            “Maybe We Rise as One is protecting him,” Ryan said.

            “Yeah, probably,” Sophia said.

            The others looked around to get their bearings.  “I’m not seeing anything notable about our surroundings besides that cabin, the woods, and that dam,” Jay said.  “Anyone disagree?”

            “The sunset is pretty,” Ryan said.  “That’s about it.”

            “Our first order of business is to find a good hiding place,” Jay said.  “From there, we can figure out how to contact one of the Gray Fungus teams.”  The valley seemed to be big enough that, if the teams were distributed equally, they had a decent amount of time before anyone stumbled across them.

            Sophia conjured a blue-gray ball and tossed it at Ryan.  This was a buff that would make him quieter and lighter on his feet so he wouldn’t leave tracks.  “Thanks,” he said, but as they went into the forest proper in search of a suitable hiding place, Ryan still had trouble not leaving evidence of his passing.  Zap was agile for his size, but moving through the forest required some tight squeezes, and he occasionally knocked over a rock or crushed a bush or bent a pair of trees away from each other while trying to squeeze between them.

            After about ten minutes, they hadn’t seen any sign of other players or of an obvious hiding spot.  “We need to figure out a direction to head toward,” Mitch said.  “Wandering aimlessly is just making metal-head over here leave more tracks for the other teams to find us with.”  Ryan held in his offense.

            “You’re right,” Jay said.  “Does anyone remember which way the canyon wall was closest?”

            “West,” Ryan said.

            “We’ll start heading that way, then.  There might be caves in the valley wall to hide in.”

            They changed direction.  “Do you think it’s possible break the dam?” Sophia asked a few minutes later.

            “What makes you ask?” Jay asked.

            “I mean, if I were Breach-bot, and I was going to design a set-piece for this big important showcase match, I might make a giant destructible dam.  Plus, if we can break it without hurting ourselves, we might kill off everyone else.

            “Maybe,” Jay said.  “Hmm.  We’ll head that direction if we don’t find a cave.”

            A few more minutes passed.

            “Get down!” Ryan said, falling flat against the path below them just slowly enough to make no noise.  The others followed suit.

            “What is it?” Jay asked.

            “We Rise as One,” Ryan said.  They had just come into view behind Ryan.

            Their travel was far less subtle than Unbroken’s had been.  They had their own giant robot: The nine-foot Heavy Dynamic Operations Unit.  He looked a lot like Zap, but more pristine: his armored plates were sleek white instead of rust brown.  His movements were less agile, but stronger.  His every step left an imprint in the earth beneath him.

            In front of him walked the sniper, Nealson, scanning his surroundings with his sniper scope.  That thing could see through cover.  If he looked in Unbroken’s direction, he’d see them.  We Rise as One also had a McCormick, and this one carried a flamethrower, with which he was trying to light the forest ablaze.  The trees weren’t taking to that strategy well.  They were burning, but the fire wasn’t spreading from tree to tree.  We Rise as One’s captain, a Morrison, was boosting the McCormick’s damage.

            “Will they see us?” Jay asked.

            “Nealson was looking around,” Ryan said.  “If he thinks to look down while checking this direction, yes.”  They were crouched, so he wouldn’t see them if he didn’t dip his gaze below his eye level.

            “Was he looking down?”

            “I didn’t see him look down, but I don’t know for sure.”

            They waited.  They could tell by the sound of H.D.O.U.’s footsteps that We Rise as One wasn’t heading directly toward them. 

            “I don’t think they know we’re here,” Ryan said.  “Should we use this opportunity to sneak attack them?”

            “That would kind of go against our stealth strategy,” Jay said.        

            “And a brawl would attract others,” Mitch said.

            “True,” Ryan said.

            “I’ll buff us just in case shit goes down,” Sophia said, and she threw balls at everyone, making Jay and Mitch faster, herself more robust, and Ryan’s damage output greater.

            Then, the H.D.O.U. stopped.  “I see something,” he said, in a booming mechanical voice.  “This tree is uprooted.”

            “It could just be a feature of the map,” the McCormick said.

            A moment passed.  “I don’t think so,” Morrison said.  “This dirt has been freshly moved.

            “Do we think it was another player, then?” McCormick asked.

            “I think it just might be,” Morrison said.  “Either a Huel-drark or the Zap.”

            “Prep for battle,” Jay said.

            Ryan pulled out his rocker launcher and pointed it in the other team’s direction.  If he was lucky, he’d be able to score a direct hit on Nealson.

            “Any idea when they might have been here?” McCormick asked.

            “No way of telling exactly,” Morrison said.

            “They’re over there!” Nealson shouted.

            The entirety of Unbroken sprang up.  Ryan fired a rocket at Nealson.  Jay drew his stun pistol and rushed toward We Rise as One’s flank.  Sophia summoned a sphere of crackling yellow energy and threw it at H.D.O.U.  Mitch strafed to the right and took cover behind a tree.  Perhaps he intended to hack H.D.O.U. from that position.

            The enemy’s Morrison shot a stream of red energy at H.D.O.U.  Now glowing and crackling with said energy, the robot fired his rail-gun at Ryan.  McCormick fired his flamethrower toward Jay, and Nealson rained sniper bullets at Sophia.

            But neither side managed to hit the other.  Instead, everyone’s projectiles struck an invisible wall, which shimmered with every impact.  McCormick’s flames blasted back toward him.  Nealson’s bullets flew straight back at the rifle that had fired them, phasing through it and hitting Nealson in the chest.  H.D.O.U.’s rail-gun slug reflected back into him and knocked him backward and onto his back.  Sophia’s flew shot back at her, freezing her in place.  Ryan’s rocket flew back at him doing a lot of damage and making him stumble.  Ryan used a healing potion.  Jay smacked into the invisible wall like a pigeon, stopping dead and falling backward.  Laughter echoed in the trees above them.  Ryan had heard the same laughter before.  It belonged to Marvin Blackwood of Sad Cake Binge Gaming.  Marvin’s character Cloun had the ability to summon a reflective wall like that one.

            The wall went away after only a second or two, but neither team resumed firing on the other.  As Morrison healed him, Nealson pointed his rifle upward, and shot through the canopy at something Ryan couldn’t see.

            Ryan got an idea.  “Give me a speed buff,” he said, once Sophia was unfrozen.  Sophia did.  Ryan shifted into sphere mode and plowed into the weakest tree he could see.  It fell in one clattering piece.  The fallen tree’s contribution to the canopy was now gone, making a patch of starlit sky visible above them.  Ryan ran straight into another tree.  Mitch got a robotic drone out of his backpack, and threw it into the air, instructing it to seek out Pickceiz and destroy them.  Jay dashed over to the area Ryan had cleared, pointing his stun gun upward.

            The H.D.O.U. seemed to like Ryan’s idea of taking away the enemy’s cover.  He grabbed a nearby tree with both arms, and tore it out of the ground, its roots ripping, then dangling from its base as H.D.O.U. tossed the tree aside.  McCormick switched to his mini-gun and pointed it toward the new hole his ally had created.  As H.D.O.U. got to work on another tree, Mitch’s drone flew over the first gap H.D.O.U. created.  It fired at something still hidden behind the canopy.  Nealson snapped his aim over to it and started firing at a spot just past the canopy’s new edge.  Ryan took his humanoid form and pointed his rocket launcher in the same direction.  He fired a rocket into the canopy, but it harmlessly brushed through leaves and flew off into the sky.

            As the H.D.O.U. worked to uproot another tree the ground he stood on fissured then opened below him, revealing a pit lined with colorful stripes.  The robot fell in and crashed into the bottom with a clank.  A purple streak, which could only have been SCBG’s Spukee, moved into the pit, taking a bit of fire from McCormick on the way down, but managing to avoid a stunning shot from Jay.  The sounds of tearing metal and human screaming echoed from the pit.  Railgun slugs rained out of it.  A thin yellow beam shot into the pit from above.  Jay dashed to the side of the pit and fired his stunning pistol toward the source of the beam.  He hit its originator: Lyfe, the Pickceiz’ healer.  The creature fell to the ground, stunned.  Ryan took his sphere form and rolled over the creature, crushing it.

            There was an explosion in the pit, and Spukee flew out, cackling.  He was showered with gunfire as he flew back into the trees but most of it missed him.  Just before he faded from sight, he summoned an illusion, the image of a giant, sickly black, and rotting raven, crawling with maggots.  The creature spread its wings and cawed.  All of the humans ran away from it in terror.  Only Ryan was immune to the effect.  We Rise as One ran to Ryan’s left, and Unbroken ran to his right.  Ryan followed his team.

            Behind him, Sord, the Pickcei with a large magical blade, flew at the fleeing Nealson and buried its sword into him.  That broke the fear effect and allowed Nealson to turn around and retaliate.  Ryan pointed his rocket launcher backward and fired at the pair of them, hoping to hit the Sord dead-on and cause the Nealson splash damage.  The opposite happened.  Sord flew to the left, and the rocket blew Nealson to pieces.  Sord turned around and rushed toward Unbroken.  All at once, the fear effect on Unbroken wore off, and they turned back toward the battle.  Ryan shot at Sord with his minigun, but only managed to graze him.  Jay fired a stunning blast at the creature.  It swerved to avoid that shot, and then flew back above the trees.  Unbroken pointed their weapons upward, but Sord did not return to menace them.

            “We should leave, and let them fight each other,” Jay said.  “It’s very unlikely that all of them will follow us.”  Unbroken retreated, and, fortunately for them, were not pursued.  Once they were sure of this, they stopped, and Sophia made sure everyone was at full health.  They slowed down and resumed trying to move stealthily.  They were close enough to the cliff face to see it looming over them in the distance through occasional gaps in the trees.  The rock was light beige and filled with thick orange stripes.

            They came upon another clearing, lit by starlight.  Four moons loomed above them.  One giant, bright white and full of craters.  One was dark but gleamed like marble.  One was small and dark blue, and the final one was whitish blue, like a pale imitation of the third.  The sky was thick with stars, and the Milky Way streaked across it.  The ground was covered in tiny gray mushrooms.  Mitch and Sophia covered their faces.  “Spores!” Mitch said.  They were invisible, but no one could miss the scent of their wet, dusty, shroomy rot.  Everyone but Ryan activated their air filters, which would reduce their risk of infection.

            “This is good,” Jay said, as he adjusted his mask to fit snugly over his nose.  “We were looking for a Gray Fungus team.  One of them has been this way.”

            “We should track them, then?” Mitch asked.

            “Yes,” Jay said, after a moment.  “We need to track them.”

            “And if they refuse our alliance, the plan is to run away?” Sophia asked.

            “Only from Reigning Fire,” Jay said.  “We can take Epidemic in a fight.”

            “This trail is from Reigning Fire,” Ryan said.  “Look around.  All the trees are in place.  There’s no way Epidemic’s Mog’Inub has been here.”  Mog’Inub was the largest playable character in the game: four stories tall and just as long, shaped like a giant L with spidery legs, covered in eyes, mouths and rupturing pustules from which she could summon horrible spawn.  There would be no mistaking the signs of that creature’s passing.

            “That’s the better party to make the alliance with, anyway,” Jay said.  Neither Mitch nor Sophia objected.  Ryan sighed.  He took note of all the mushrooms he could see.  They formed a line that bisected the clearing diagonally.

            “The trail goes like this,” Ryan said, pointing one arm ahead and to his right and the other behind and to his left.

            “So which way did they come from and which way did they go?” asked Mitch.

            “The right leads away from the center of the valley,” Jay said.  “That’s probably our best bet.”

            And that’s the way they went, following the trail of mushrooms.  They occasionally encountered more than a mushroom.  There were strands of fungal mass hanging from some of the trees.  Elsewhere, patches of ground were covered in thick, rough fungal growth.  Among those patches of ground was the whole surface of a small hill in the shape of a perfect half-circle.  Half-sticking out of was a fully infected Clypeus.  Clypeus was a member of the Legion of the Iron Star, who normally possessed a massive shield.  This one, however, had lost track of it.  The monster roared and raved at Unbroken as they passed.  Ryan put it out of its misery.

            Things like these grew more common as they advanced.  They were catching up to their enemy.  What would Jay do to try to get Reigning Fire’s attention?  What would they think Unbroken had to contribute to an alliance?  They had speed and stealth.  That was sort of the opposite of what Reigning Fire had going for them.  They were big and powerful but left this fungal growth everywhere they went.

            Eventually, there was stomping in the distance.  Unbroken stopped following the trail and headed directly toward it.  Jay picked up a rock and got out his laser gun.  He used the laser to carve ‘we want to talk’ on the rock.

            “I’m apprehensive about that plan,” Ryan said.

            “I am too,” Jay said, “but I think it’s our best shot.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to gauge their reaction to it without having to put myself in danger.  I’ll run back this way if anything goes wrong.  Jay dashed ahead.  After he was out of sight, the others heard Jay through their communicators.  “I see them,” Jay said.  “It’s Reigning Fire.”  Their footsteps came through as clearly as Jay’s voice.  Each one made a terrible squishy thromp.  “I’m throwing the rock.”  A pittering sound as the rock hit grass.  “They saw it,” Jay said.  “They’re stopping to examine it.  They’re talking about it.”  Half a minute passed.  “They’re looking around.  They’re raising their weapons.  Fuck!  Fuck!  Start running!  I’ll catch up with you!”  Unbroken turned around and started running.

            “How far away are they?” Ryan asked.

            “A few hundred feet behind you.”

            Jay caught up with the rest of the group and slowed down to keep pace with them.  Mitch pulled out another drone and ordered it to go back and hold off Reigning Fire.  About a minute later, they heard an explosion.  Not long after that, a member of Reigning Fire came into view.  It was the giant cloud of fungal spores, Ichaboth.  The creature was ten times Ryan’s size, spread out like a bank of fog across the ground.  Ryan held his minigun out and fired into the creature.  These bullets wouldn’t do much, but anything was helpful.  Jay ordered the team to spread out, forcing the creature to go after only one of them.  It chose to follow Mitch.  It approached and then surrounded him, causing him to disappear within its fog.  Jay ran over, pulling out a little hand-held flamethrower, and shot it at the monster.

            Something beeped inside Ichaboth.  The monster started moving away from Jay at full speed.  Jay dashed in the opposite direction.  Mitch flew out of the top of Ichaboth, riding the blast of his jetpack.  He grabbed a high branch of a thick oak.  A fiery explosion engulfed more than half of the monster, making him dissipate.  He reformed a moment later but was smaller.

            The rest of Reigning Fire emerged from the trees behind them.  Joss’ own character was in front.  Huel-drark was a gray giant, covered in smooth, moist flesh.  One arm was a cannon.  The other was a shield.  Behind him, Xig’zah, a jagged creature shaped like a ten-pointed star with a spindly leg protruding from each point, skittered across the ground.  The titanic walking mushroom Avaggdon lumbered behind the two of them.  Joss pointed his cannon directly at Ryan, who took sphere form and rolled out of the way.  Ryan took his normal form, and shot a rocket at Joss, who was likewise able to dodge him.

            From the top of his tree, Mitch tossed a grenade at the approaching foes.  Xig’zah leapt onto the trunk of a different tree to avoid it.  Jay emerged from behind yet another tree and shot a paralyzing bolt at the spider, who fell back the ground, landing close to the grenade.  It exploded, throwing Xig’zah into the air and setting him aflame.  Joss jumped forward, allowing the blast of the grenade to push him toward Ryan.  He aimed at Ryan’s chest, then, when Ryan dodged, he took his actual shot, landing a hit.  Sophia tossed a healing orb into him, and Ryan used one of his own healing potions.

            The Avaggdon plugged itself into the ground.  It lit up, glowing bright blue.  It spun in place, and the ground shook.  Joss grabbed onto a tree to keep his balance.  Ryan had nothing to grab onto, so he fell backward.  Sophia managed to keep her balance for a few strides, but then tripped.  Joss charged up his cannon, aiming at Ryan’s prone form.  Ryan took his sphere form and barreled straight toward Joss.  The laser blast shot through him, knocking off a chunk of his health, and he crashed into into Joss, knocking him back and onto the ground.  Ryan took his normal form and shot a pair of rockets straight at Joss’s face. 

            Once Joss’ laser cannon recharged, he fired up at Ryan, but Ryan anticipated this and dodged to the right.  Before Joss could stand, he leapt into the air, took sphere form, and landed on his prone enemy.  Joss was half-crushed, but still alive.  He lifted Ryan and threw him backward, away from the rest of Unbroken.  Ryan took his main form.  Ichaboth flew over to Joss, and settled over him, healing him.  Xig’zah leapt toward Ryan.  Ryan jumped out of the way, and the spider landed on the ground near him.  With another spin, Avaggdon morphed the ground around them, raising a great wall that sealed Ryan and Reigning Fire off from the rest of Unbroken.  Xig’zah jumped Ryan again, this time managing to latch onto his face.  The monster made a noise like a deep but shrill chuckle and vomited a sticky viscous gray blob onto Ryan.  Ryan ripped the creature off his face and tossed it aside, but the glob stayed stuck to him.  Ryan knew from experience that there was no point trying to get it off.  At the same time, Ichaboth reshaped itself to surrounded him.  The fog penetrated him, moving between his rusty metal plates and leaking into his circuits.  He expected to take damage but didn’t.  Ichaboth was doing something else.  Ryan’s one-million eyes went wide at once.  Only one of Ichaboth’s debuffs would be useful in this situation.  Ichaboth could inflict frailty.  He was ensuring the bomb would kill him in one shot.  That only left one question left to be answered: Where was Joss?  He’d been down on the ground just a second ago.  Ryan listened for the creature’s squishy footsteps.

            They were to the left.  Ryan lunged toward them, tackling Joss as he tried to escape the fog.  Ryan pinned him to the ground.  Joss struggled, but Zap was bigger than Huel-drark, and Ryan kept the monster under him.  The blob on his face exploded, consuming the two of them in a flash of light and pelting them with sharp gray shrapnel.

//////////

            Once he had exited the game, Ryan took his helmet off and stood.  To the right of the theater, several seats away, Joss did the same thing.  Ryan waved politely at Joss, but Joss didn’t acknowledge him as he left the theater.

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