I was reading through various news articles and headlines on my phone as Caroline drove the three of us into the city. It’d been half an hour since I finished my summary of the last week’s events. A long silence followed, she was probably going to be upset at me for a while.
I stared out the window, the buildings growing on the horizon. Unfortunately it was a familiar sight, I looked back down at my phone displeased with my return to that hell hole. None of the articles really seemed to be saying much other than what I already knew.
Gods were playing a game with us and entrances to the Underhollow were appearing all over the world. Well finding out that outside of Candidates almost the entire rest of the adult population awakened as Adventurers was very surprising, but most of them had non-combat related skills. Simple skills like food preparation or construction were common and the consensus seemed to be that Adventurers received skills related to their abilities prior to awakening. Though some speculated that it wasn't as much about their abilities but rather their wishes.
The one thing it seemed everyone could agree on was that chaos had overtaken everything. Although the amount of monsters that had escaped wasn't small, they were weak and very few casualties occurred as a result of them. People had been the ones to turn the world upside down over the 24 hours after the awakening. The fact that it had only been 24 hours was also still a strange pill to swallow. In almost every major prison a jailbreak occurred leaving most developed countries to send their armies to fight criminal Candidates who had been doing significantly more damage than the monsters.
Many normal people began to riot and loot during the chaos, which allowed for even more damage to pile up much faster than governments could handle it. The city resembled an apocalypse movie set, and was eerily empty in comparison to how busy it used to be. The surrounding buildings and cars were destroyed, as we were traveling I saw only tens of people out and about.
Trash and debris were filling the streets in some areas and we had to reroute our path a couple times. There was evidence of the government attempting action in some areas, and some streets we passed had police barricades across them. We took a normally nonsensical path avoiding government policed areas – if you could call them that – and roads that weren’t traversable because of flipped cars or crumbling buildings. We even turned around once because one of the streets had many more people than the others. But other than that people were scarce, two or three people here or there looting or running to god knows where.
“Where is everyone?” I whispered.
“Most people fled the city or hid inside, and everyone else is either in the Underhollow or committing crimes or stopping them. Order collapsed pretty quickly. That’s why I’ve been avoiding areas with lots of people.” She glanced over at me, an emotion I thought was close to resentment flashing through her expression. “This is why I was worried about you.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was like this.”
“It's fine.” I knew it was decidedly not fine.
“Soooo… Where are we headed?” I mostly wanted to fill the silence. Once I broke the silence I dreaded the idea of its return.
“We’re going to meet with Reid.”
“God… I think it's been like 2 or 3 years since I’ve seen him.” A memory of her older brother flashed through my head. We always got on like a house on fire. When Caro and I first met we became inseparable, but it didn’t take long with Reid following us like a lost duckling for us to become basically siblings from that point on. They were so similar they could’ve been twins, aside from the fact that Reid had blue eyes rather than brown and was a solid six inches taller than her, putting him at a cool six foot four. “It's going to be weird seeing your perfect nuclear family again after all this time.”
“Ah… Well mom and dad won’t be around, they’re abroad right now.” The air became thick with anxiety at her comment. I regretted mentioning them, normally we could’ve joked about how appearances weren’t always accurate, but now wasn’t the time.
“Oh” a long pause followed as I looked out the window trying to muster up a new topic to get her mind off of it. A destroyed city bus that had been overturned zipped past us to my right. “Right, so we’re going to see Reid. Anyone else where we’re headed?”
“I’m not sure, I got a message from him yesterday basically just asking me to come meet him and I said I had to go get you first.”
Uhhh… Master?
“So I never asked but did you or Reid become Candidates? Or awaken at all?”
Master
“Yeah, I am a Candidate and I got a contract, but I never asked Reid. I didn't think about it at the time. It was pretty chaotic that first day, I nearly ran over som-”
MASTER! Aureus was grabbing onto my cloak haphazardly pulling back on it and consequently choking me with it in the process. I whipped around, What?! – “Oh…”
“What?” Caroline asked nonchalantly.
“Uhh, well don’t look now but I think we’re being pursued by some sort of Mad Max style crazies.” At this point a tricked out semi truck was nearly bumping into us, and a man covered with black and red body paint hung off the front of it reaching for our car. Caroline reflexively reached for the rearview mirror that wasn’t there to look at our pursuers.
“Shit!” She said with a glance over her shoulder, and hit the gas. With a lurch we narrowly avoided an additional passenger, the truck blowing its horn in bursts in response.
“Should… Should I attack them?” I had turned around completely in my chair at this point, looking back at the truck and man. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and had covered most of one side of his torso with black body paint and the other with red. With a swastika and the blood drop cross each taking up one of his pecks. His face had the opposite coloration with red on the left half and black on the right. That gave me two more good reasons to attack him other than that there was no way they were trying to stop us for some tea.
I glanced over at Caroline, time seemed to slow as she slammed on the breaks and my head snapped back with the inertia. Another truck speeding through where we might’ve been if she hadn’t slowed harshly. Unfortunately for us this meant that the truck following us had a chance to catch up and we were nearly blocked off.
“Lets just talk to them.”
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I stared at her, I was shocked beyond belief. She was all over the place emotionally today but in the face of violent racists parading down the street as if it were the most normal thing ever she said to just talk to them? A quick flash of doubt washed over me, why would anyone want to stop in an obvious trap to talk to some crazy nazis? I pushed the distrust down reminding myself that this was Caro, she probably had a reason. Still I couldn’t completely get rid of it, a small part of me screamed that I was better off on my own. I ignored it.
“I really don’t know if that’s a good idea…?” anxiety was gripping me, I had Aureus so I was fine but I didn’t know enough about Caro’s abilities. The worry that I wouldn’t be able to protect her was bubbling up inside me, it was strange to have such a strong protective instinct just seconds after doubting her. Shame was added to my ever growing list of current emotions, it was overwhelming.
“Well it seems like our only option at the moment.” She said with a sigh, and began rifling through some bags in the back seat. The next thing I knew I had a pistol in my hand and she was loading a shotgun. “I assume you know how to use that even though it has been a few years?”
I nodded with a weak smile, “Well now I feel much safer, good thing Reid isn’t here to accidentally shoot someone!”
That got a chuckle, “That was a BB gun not a real gun, and my money is still on that it wasn’t an accident.”
As we were stepping out of the car, I left my door open for Aureus to appear if needed. Stay inside unless I call you.
But I can defeat these humans easily! He protested. Unlike him, I wasn’t so certain, we had no information about what had been going on here since the awakening. There was no need to discourage him though.
Yes, but it would make me feel better if we have a secret weapon and the element of surprise okay? Plus I don’t want to kill anyone if I don’t have to, even if they’re the scum of the earth. Well maybe. Maybe we should kill them… I don’t know, I haven't decided so just wait okay?
The man from the original truck was slowly approaching Caroline's side of the car and in front of us were a small group of men gathering around the second truck. A few had guns while others didn’t. Caroline was already pointing her gun towards the man as he smiled with his hands up. While I was on guard towards the other group of men, really my gun was mostly for show since I had no plans of using it as my main weapon of choice.
“Now, now my darlings. There’s no need for that now.” I fought the urge to curse at him, though Aureus did call him a ‘dimwitted bastard’ who ‘didn’t know his place’.
The GGC had been very active, but I wasn’t planning to read any of it when a quest window popped up in front of me.
[“Traveling Spring Painter” has sponsored you.]
[“Abandoned Bloodied Sword” has sponsored you.]
~~*~~
Quest
Name: Road Rage
Description: Your group has been stopped by hostile humans. Successfully negotiate to leave, join their group, scare them off, or kill them all. As long as you come out the victor of this altercation you will reap the rewards!
Reward: +1 to all stats, +1 unallocated stat point for every 2 kills.
~~*~~
I quickly accepted the quest and shot a look towards Caroline, when our eyes met she gave me a small nod. Briefly I pondered on why the rewards were so generous, but I pushed it out of my mind, I could think about that when we got out of here. I focused my eyes back on the group of men casually leaning on their truck laughing and sneering at us. Aureus’ anger was pushing its way into my mind.
“Tell your buds over there to get out of our way.” Caroline said flatly, if she was tense it didn’t reflect in her actions or words at all.
“We just wanna have a talk is all.” He responded, the boys at the truck erupted into obscene gestures and whistles. I fired a shot into their headlight, as a result the group pointed their guns towards me. The fact that it hit its target was surprising, I assumed it had something to do with my level and prior experience even though I was never a stellar shot.
Their casual atmosphere disappeared and one of the group grabbed an already bloodied crow bar from the bed of the pickup truck. He took one step forward before stopping and crossing his arms. With a glance to my side I saw that the painted man had held up his hand and was looking at me. He was only five or six feet away from Caroline now and her gun was trained on him. I flashed him a smile.
[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” sighs and complains that you should’ve shot at least one of them by now.]
[“Abandoned Bloodied Sword” expresses that you should kill them all, but should castrate them first.]
[“Traveling Spring Painter” gasps and implores that you give them swift deaths.]
“Wow I thought the Painter wouldn’t approve of killing them, though I guess both of them provided this quest...” I muttered under my breath, I had already decided that we should kill them. The only reason I was holding back now was because of the fear of the unknown. We didn’t know if they had leveled up too, they could’ve received quests to murder or loot so they could be higher leveled. Or they could just be some random thugs that weren’t that impressive, there really wasn’t any way to know… Well outside of learning the hard way that is.
“You know you shouldn’t do that.” He said as he took another step forward.
“Stop that is close enough, one more step and I’ll shoot.” Caro said firmly.
“Okay, okay. Then we can talk from right here.”
I snorted, we were all aware they weren’t here to talk, “Can’t you just get on with it? What do y’all want?”
He sighed, “Well, you are no fun at all are you?” He said disapprovingly at me, then looked towards Caroline and continued, “You must have a rough time bringing that one to parties huh?”
When he didn’t get a rise out of either of us he continued monologuing, “The world is in such an interesting state right now you know. It's so nice to be able to freely be ourselves without fear. You really should join us, you’re nearly perfect. Such a pity your eyes are brown though.” He cast a disapproving glance in my direction. “It's also a pity your choice in company isn’t the best. But, from the looks of it she is mostly white and, what, maybe Greek? Italian? We could accept a package deal.”
I narrowed my eyes at that comment, I suppose anyone who didn’t fit their preferences wasn’t white. I wondered if he was aware that Italy was in Europe. I mused for a moment, considering commenting on his race as well just to inflame him. I doubted he was ‘white’ by his own standards, he was covering his own skin with paint after all.
Caroline scoffed, “A package deal? Sorry but we aren’t for sale, and even if we were you couldn’t afford it.”
“Ooooh, okay okay. But I think you’re overestimating your worth darlin’. I could always just let my boys kill one of you and take the other, or maybe kill both or take both? I dunno whatever happens, happens. But we’ll get all your stuff either way. It was cute that you girls thought you could get away from us, but once we got you in our sights your fate was sealed.”
My mind immediately brought back the memory of the road that we backed out of, they must have seen us there. I looked over at Caroline, her face was grim. At first I thought she was worried about how we would get out of it, but that thought quickly disappeared with the sound of her shooting at the painted man in front of her.
“Ow, well what was that for? We weren’t done talking yet.” He took a swift step forward, followed by a second shot by Caroline as she stepped back. There was blood dripping through the black paint on his chest and abdomen, but not nearly as much as a shotgun blast should cause. Really it seemed like he had barely gotten injured, it couldn’t have hit anything vital.
Aureus. I didn’t have to say anything else, within seconds he was on top of the car, launching earth element blasts at the man. The man took a large leap back to the sidewalk, and smiled. “Well, well, well. Isn’t this an interesting turn of events?”