7/23

Studio 10, a small fishing boat in the ocean.

10:55 PM

Mercy, Odysseus and Quins have come to save/berate me. It's mostly berating.

"Moron."

"Git."

"Kuso baka." Shit, I know Mercy is mad when she goes into anime insults.

I continue to float in the water, and examine the loot.

Jolene Teeth. (30 of them) Each tooth can be used to permanently increase the sharpness of a weapon and increase the amount of hemorrhaging caused.

Blood Core. A gem that can permanently increase your Blood alignment.

The teeth might be useful to someone who doesn't magically make their own weapons. I'll offer them up to the Pathbreakers loot pool.

Blood is a rare magic type used by Faith based classes, notably the Invoker/Warlock/Demonologist classes. Though using it would probably unlock some variant classes for me, I'll hold off on using it in case anyone I know plans on doing Blood magic anytime soon.

Blood magic itself is interesting because I am totally trying to avoid dealing with my dumb decisions to come out here alone.

"Jun." Mercy says my name like a condemnation. "Get out of the water."

"I gotta let my AP and KP recharge before I use my armor again. And I'm not getting on that small-ass boat with all of you when I'm not armored up. Still Scourged, ya know."

"Hey don't insult my boat!" Steve shouts over to me. Steve is back to being an overweight middle aged white guy with a proper mustache. So is Gary. Well, Gary looks like a skinny middle-aged white guy. They aren't holding their plasma rifles. Huh. Dropping the weapon reverted them? Man, I really want to test these glitched rifles on other NPCs.

"So you didn't get the levels you need?" Odysseus asks. I shake my head no.

Odysseus has his rifle but is sans armor. Quins is wearing a Football (British) jersey but has his bow and quiver. Mercy is in her mecha-musume armored form. They're here to help me. Ready for a fight. And I left them behind.

"I lost my head and fucked up. Nearly died to a big blood sorcerer shark. Sorry, everyone."

"Ah. I suppose we couldn't come in while the fish and chips were still swimming, eh?" I shrug in Quins's general direction.

I see Odysseus pick up one of the plasma rifles, aim at the ocean and pull the trigger. His eyebrows raise with interest, then both his regular rifle and my plasma rifle disappear into his inventory. I mean, I was gonna offer him one but he could have asked. Oh, he's also taking Gary's Vietnam era rifle. And the harpoon gun.

"What the fuck, man. Give Gary and Steve their weapons back. They're not magic or anything."

Gary gets mad. "Listen, robot shirt, I'm Stafford, he's Wallace. Got it?"

"Okay, Ga- Stafford."

Odysseus returns the mostly useless weapons to the deck.

Mercy is just glaring at me. Her arms are crossed. That's not good. "Again, Jun. You went alone again. Third time."

I try to defend myself in the only way possible, which is also the most pedantic way possible. "I don't think the stadium counts, I was with-"

Mercy stops me. "No, Jun. No. You are not invincible. You are not a super saiyan. Even with your armor, you're not as durable as I am. You need us. You need people. You need a team."

I look down at the red and white life preserver I'm hanging on to. I can't meet her eyes right now.

"Yeah, I know."

"Mate, I'da come with ya in a 'eartbeat."

"Yeah, I know."

"We're squadmates first, super humans second."

"Yeah, I know."

Mercy tugs on the rope leading to the life preserver. "You got enough juice to armor up now?"

I don my Lunar Beetle armor and clamber aboard. "Does it help if I figured something out about myself? I talked to Ga-Stafford and Wallaby about it."

"Wallace," grumbles Wallace, lighting another cigarette. He offers one to each of my teammates and Quins accepts. Quins takes a single drag like a man reacquainting himself with a long lost friend, coughs violently, then flicks the cig into the ocean.

"Fine," Mercy says, opening the lower deck door which leads back to the studio lot. "Explain your massive revelation and it better be good."

We start disembarking. "I figured out that Ivy has people and a place to return to, and I want and need that too. It's something I never had when I was in the military."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Quins nods. "Feel ya there, mate. I'm mostly in the states because I don't have anyone waiting for me back 'ome."

"So I want to be a better friend to the people back home. I want to make more friends." As I say that, I look back one more time at Stafford and Wallace. I open my inventory and hand them each a Denver omelet. They both take the paper plate loaded with eggs and smile at me.

Stafford tells me, "stay safe, robot shirt."

Wallace takes a big whiff of the omelet. "Kid, you're pretty alright for a [racial epithet]."

"Woah!" I say.

"Woah, Woah!" Odysseus says, turning back.

"Not okay," Quins says.

"Just ignore the boomers," Mercy says.

Stafford punches Wallace in the arm, which makes him drop his omelet. I step off the boat and into a studio movie lot. I shut the door behind me. Those aren't people in there. Those aren't people.

"You can't neglect the person, the people, at home," Odysseus says solemnly. I pat him on the shoulder with my gauntleted hand. He sighs.

"How many more levels?" Mercy asks me.

"Eight," I reply. "I was doing each floor in order. I figured if I cleared everything under floor 20 I'd get what I need. Aside from the floors we already cleared today."

Odysseus shakes his head. "Most of those take a while to clear. Studio 12, the labyrinth, is a mess. 14 can be a cluster of zombies or they can be sprawled across a building. 18, the swamp, is just terrible. And 19-"

Mercy gives her reason for negating 19. "Has those naked big boobs succubi that you couldn't fight."

"Wait, is that what's in there?" Odysseus asks, flabbergasted. "I... I could take a look. Go down on them. I mean I could probably take them down. I mean go to town on them. Sorry, I could fill them up. With bullets! With... Bullets."

All of us stop and look at him. His face is red. He looks away, nervously scratches the back of his neck, and just says, "it's been a while."

Quins pats him on the back. "Don't worry, mate. I'll find you a nice cougar. Or three. Here, let me show you some of the unsolicited lewd photos I've been sent." Quins and Odysseus stop as Quins flicks through his phone's barely PG-13 gallery.

Mercy and I keep walking. She takes my gauntleted hand in her gauntleted hand. In her Angle Frame - White Falcon armor, she's got a mecha type of helmet, albeit one that has a gap around back for her purple hair to flow out untangled. The sharp blue and white angles of the armor contrast so well against her dark brown soft curves.

"I really am sorry," I say. "I kinda lost it. I kinda lose it a lot around you nowadays."

"You're totally obsessed. I get it." She squeezes my hand. "And I know why you ran off by yourself." She stops me and takes my other hand in hers. "Same reason I had to get away from you earlier." She shyly smiles and looks up at me. "I might be a bit obsessed too."

We stand there like that, holding hands, just wanting each other. Doing what we can to hold each other.

I brush her cheek with the back of my hand. "When I start curing Scourge, you can stick with me for like the first week, though, right?"

"Yeah, that sounds doable."

"You sound doable."

"Horny boy."

"Thirsty girl."

Odysseus and Quins catch up with us. "You know," Odysseus observes, "we haven't seen the studio 21 through 25 yet. It should be unlocked since we beat studio 20."

"Yeah, but even I'm not stupid enough to go in there," I tell him as we all walk together back to the airship. "Not without everyone being ready for it. 21st floors and higher have 6th tier monsters as regular goons. I can reliably take down a 6th tier now, but not a room full of them."

Odysseus looks thoughtful. "Oh, sure, I was just wondering what the theme of that area was. We haven't really seen a lot of sci-fi stuff. I was wondering what the bootleg Star Wars studio would be like."

Mercy and I both come to immediate and abrupt stops.

At the same time Mercy says, "light sabers!" and I say "spaceships!"

"Uh oh," says Quins.

Mercy and I both turn and start dashing back towards the alley between the lots, only to find ourselves lifted by the collar by Odysseus. Our feet keep trying to move. Then we stop struggling.

"Hey Odysseus," I calmly say. "Did you get taller?"

"Yeah. I'm six foot eight now. No idea why."

Mercy holds her hands up placatingly, while still being held by the scruff. "Okay, we promise to just open the doors and look, right Jun? We're not going in."

"Unless it's Star Wars." I amend.

Odysseus sighs. "And we're going to be careful and slow? Your healer, who has to heal your asses, is asking."

"Yes sir," we both say, defeated.

-----

7/23

5th Studio lot, Studios 21-25.

11:10 PM

"Where's Ivy?" I ask as we round the corner. "Her buffs are pretty sweet."

Odysseus starts to say something but is cut off by Quins. "Oh she's being sweet with that lady SEAL." He ends with a snicker.

Odysseus's face falls. I slap him on the arm. "Sorry dude."

He shrugs. "Sometimes it's better to rip the bandaid off."

"You've got lots of Wisdom, don't you?" I ask.

He just barely shrugs. "Started with 37, haven't bumped it up."

Fuck me. I think he's more wise than me at half my Wisdom.

Mercy elbows me. "Wisdom doesn't compensate for life experience."

Quins smirks and says, "Jun, I can get you some messy break ups, if you like."

Everyone laughs. I do too.

We get to the door. "21st Studio. Equivalent to a 21st dungeon floor. Expect 6th tier enemies."

I'm still in Lunar Beetle armor. Quins and Odysseus take their full armor out of inventory and don it. Mercy transforms into her Psy Dragon armor.

I open the door. There are dozens of small monsters wreaking havoc in a department store.

Gremlin, Tier 5. Fast and strong but stupid. Also, they can duplicate themselves endlessly.

Possible loot: None.

I close the door. "Gremlins," I tell everyone.

"This lot might be 80s movies," Odysseus muses. He turns out to be correct.

Studio 22 is a dense jungle. We look from the doorway and see nothing, until there's a slight shimmer. "Predator, 1987," Odysseus says.

Odysseus opens studio 23, looks around, says, "The Blob, 1988." He closes the door.

At studio 24 he opens, then closes the door quickly. "Evil Dead. 1981. We do NOT go in there."

"Why?" I ask, innocently. "Isn't that the chainsaw hand movie?"

"Demonic possession," Odysseus informs me. "We'd probably get turned on each other. "And, uh..." He decidedly looks away from Mercy. "There's hentai trees."

Mercy looks thoughtful. "But how... Oh! Eh. But the bark would be rough..."

"Mercy, you're thinking out loud," I tell her.

Her dark brown skin gets flushed. "Sorry."

Odysseus heads to studio 25. "There's a couple of really awful possibilities for this one. The Thing and Hellraiser are probably the worst options."

"They did The Thing down at the actual McMurdo base in Antarctica," I say. "I don't think the Dracosys does repeats very often."

Odysseus nods. He barely cracks the door open, then closes it. "Hellraiser. Fuck that."

I ask, "hell? We can probably kill a demon or two."

Odysseus shakes his head. "Don't any of you watch horror?"

"Anime," says Mercy.

"Sci-fi," I say.

"More of a Bridgerton, Jane Austin fella," Quins says.

Odysseus looks at us, clearly disappointed. "The High Priest Cenobite, or Pinhead, as he's known to fans, is capable of sudden, violent murder through supernatural means. Hooked chains from nowhere rip you apart. Fuck that."

"Yeah, okay," Mercy says glumly. "I guess we don't get fun sci-fi stuff today."

Quins claps me on the back. "Right then, let's get back, get in our respective beds, and get some sleep before the dungeon break tommara."

"Hey," I say slowly, not wanting to ask. "Do you guys think I should have just grinded out the levels to cure Scourge right away? I mean, people are dying."

"At first, yeah," says Odysseus. "I was frustrated that we didn't just clear everything each day. But once we got the message about something coming to kill you when you get what you need? No. We all need both experience and levels. So we can face that together."

Mercy just nods. Quins voices his agreement.

I didn't forget that the Dracosys itself was going to send an assassin to kill me once I could cure Scourge. I just ignored it. Jose had let my whole team know. "I just kind of thought I'd be able to take it out. But after the shark almost killing me, I think I'll try to be a bit more cautious."

"And finally allocate your free points into Toughness and Agility, like I said," Mercy says sweetly.

"How many points do you have to spare?" Odysseus asks.

"Don't ask, it'll make you sick," Mercy tells him. She sticks her tongue out at me.

I sigh. Yeah, it's finally time to allocate points and use my Upcycle ability to get rid of some powers and upgrade others.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.