Transcribed Interview

Recorded at the City of Angels Justice Department

Subject A: Interviewer - Agent Greenpeas, Dexter

Subject B: Interviewee - Captured Puritan Extremist, Male (Unknown)

-begin excerpt-

A: All right, Mister? What is your name?

B: Fuck you! You filthy disgusting mutant scum.

A: Okay….(sighs) Do you know where you are?

B: I don’t have to answer questions from the likes of you!

A: Do you know why you are here?

B: We fucking purified you! We blew them all to hell! You don’t get to pollute our pure blood anymore.

A: Yes, you attempted to blow up a school full of children.

B: Corrupted filth! It’s better to cut the vine at the root than the leaf!

A: Right. Sticking to the party line, then. How about this? Who planned the attack this morning?

B: I will never talk! Your impure words cannot corrupt my clean and strong soul!

A: Uh, huh. Well, you and your four asshole buddies are all being offered the same deal. One of you gets to die by a single gunshot to the head, and the rest of you get pain worms. Whoever squeals first gets a gunshot.

B: I demand a trial by my peers, not you filthy subhuman monsters.\

A: That’s not how it works here. You were tried and sentenced as a group without your presence being required in the courtroom. Pretty open and shut case, especially when one of the New Avalon sky lords witnessed what you did and intervened.

B: (remains silent)

A: So you get to choose for yourself. Quick, painless bullet to the brain or slow and very painful death by foot-long worms that burrow into your nerve centers and eat you from the inside.

B: (Screaming and struggling) Let me go! My people will come for me!

A: No, they won’t. We’ve seen this too many times to tolerate.

B: I don’t believe you, filth! You lie!

A: Worms it is. Guards take him away.

B: No, no, no, wait! I’ll talk.

-end excerpt-

I lay back in my bed for a moment. I had 4k experience leftover and hedged to save it to bring my Survivor occupation to ten. I sat up, things to do, grinding to accomplish. My heart still tugged at me, but wallowing in self-reflection would only slow me down. I was finally making progress, and I wasn’t going to slow down now.

I knew there would be more blood on my hands before long. Rotters would come, possibly other scavengers. Some would try to kill me, and I wasn’t about to let it happen. I had to go shopping again. Ugh. This time I’ll get a bunch of those disposable ponchos instead of an oversized yellow raincoat. Coveralls would be good too.

A thousand credits later, I had a whole new wardrobe of several sets of coveralls, a couple of pairs of boots, and ponchos. A face shield and a hard hat with a side light were what set me back the most. It wouldn't be an issue if Vibrating Strike weren’t so damn messy.

I swung by Ada’s for lunch before an afternoon of hunting. Ada scowled at me slyly. She knew. I laughed to myself as Meera set a bowl of vindaloo in front of me, “I couldn’t walk right yesterday.” She said sternly, but her eyes and smile said something very different.

“Perhaps you can not walk right tomorrow?” I said quietly as Ada glared at Meera for lingering at my table.

“Perhaps the day after.” She hinted as she left.

Ada walked over to the table and sat down across from me. She pointed the wooden spoon at me threateningly, “It’s all fun and games till someone gets pregnant or catches feelings. You better do right by my granddaughter.”

I blushed and lowered my head, Ada was strong, and the old lady act was just an act. She was at least a D-rank, and everyone knew it. “Yes, ma’am. That’s up to Meera as much as it is to me.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“She says you’re being safe. Just know that if you break her heart, I’ll break your neck.” Ada said with a grim smile. A chill ran down my back. Ada’s family mattered more to her than me. No matter how many ‘good boy points’ I had earned over the years. I respected that. I liked Ada, and I liked Meera. I liked Meera a lot. Maybe it would develop into something more, maybe not.

Whack! The spoon smacked me in the forehead, and that hurt. I didn’t even see Ada move, not the spoon. She looked at me hard, raised one eyebrow, and said finally, “You’re a good boy, and I think you’d make cute great-grandkids.”

I rubbed my head as she went back to her throne. Meera peeked from the kitchen door quizzically. I shook my head at her and ate my food.

Back out in the ruined remnants of Old Columbus, I hunted rats. Things went even faster today. My new skills helped immensely. I was being trained to fight by the skill, training the muscle memory and psychological aspects as I went. I had to trust the skill. If I deviated from the instinctual movements, I would get zapped, bitten, or scratched. My body adapted, and the level of instinctual fear of being injured fell away. It would take time, but it was like training with an instructor who bit or zapped you when you fucked up.

The Heightened Resistance skill turned out to be invaluable. Apparently, Resistance applied to being shocked by rats, and my now much higher resistance value showed that. A day ago, they would knock me on my ass and have me seeing stars. Now it was a jolt up the arm or leg like grabbing hot house wiring. It still gave me the “Ouch, fuck,” reaction, but it was no longer a life-endangering zap.

I spent the afternoon killing rats. They started getting thin on the ground, and I realized they were growing weary of me. Were they smart enough to learn to stay away from the crazed rat-killing monster in their midst?

I was taking my latest haul of four rat tails to the canvas tarp I had bought for the purpose of transporting them. Twenty-seven other tails were piled there. Thirty-one rats, 6820 more experience. Just one rat short of pushing my Survivor level to seven. I stepped around the corner and saw the two people standing near my pile of tails. I had known they were there before I had seen them.

One stood about my height and wore a long stained peacoat down to his knees, a broad-brimmed hat covered his head, and a gas mask sans canister covered his face. The other was a head shorter and broader built. This one had stained brown and black jeans and a half-shredded puffy coat. His face was bare, and the green-scaled lizard head was a bit familiar. I’d seen this pair around before. The tall one had a sawn-off shotgun in a hip holster and a spiked baseball bat in hand. The short lizard-anthro had a big revolver, also in a hip holster, and a beat-up-looking machete.

They saw me approach and eyed me. “Oi scunner, you’re taking all the prey. It’s not cool.” Said the masked one, his voice distorted. He stepped forward, not quite menacingly but maybe trying to intimidate me? I couldn’t tell.

“Didn’t know there was a limit,” I replied as I walked up to him, crowding into his personal space. My hands were holding an armload of rattails.

“This is our hunting spot. Shove off cunt.” Spat the lizard.

I shrugged, “I don’t want trouble with you. Let me pack up, and I’ll be out of your way.” I stepped around the masked one and dropped the tails onto my pile.

The lizard said, “We’ll be taking these.” He said.

“I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that,” I said as I stood up straight. I still had one length of rebar on me. I checked my status real quick. My stamina was over half, and my health was ticking up past 80%. I turned around to face the masked one. The lizard was on my left.

“I said I didn’t want trouble, not that you could just walk away with my hard work.”

“Heh, like you can stop us.” Sneered the lizard.

The lizard closed into my space then, swaggering. I turned to look down at him. He was short. “You think I can’t?” I said to him.

When I turned my head, the bigger one swung the bat at me one-handed. It was a fight now. I swung the rebar up in a Vibrating Strike to parry. The burst of noise and suddenly destroyed bat stunned them for a second. I kicked the big one in the chest, flinging him away from me. The lizard backed off, drawing his pistol, “The fuck was that?”

Concentrating on phasing, I jumped at him, the pistol barked, and I felt the bullet tear a hole in my shoulder. I wasn’t entirely out of sync with reality yet. “Fucking variant!” he shouted as he fired two more rounds through me. I gripped my shoulder and rushed him. I sensed the other getting up with my vibration sense.

I do have to say that gunshots make fantastic echolocation noises. They also hurt like hell. My ears had about burst from the loud bangs in the enclosed building shell we were in. I was angry now. I had been happy to take my shit and go. I wasn’t about to let these two shitheads take my stuff, in any case. I hate bullies and always have.

Without a second thought, I jabbed the foot-long piece of rebar into the chest of the lizard. It passed through him—much to both of our surprises. I let go of the rebar, and as soon as I did, shit went sideways. In normal reality, two pieces of matter cannot exist in the same space. I had done this sort of thing before, just not to a person. What happens when two kinds of matter suddenly coexist? One of two things, and it all comes down to density and how fast something phases into existence inside of something else.

I learned just now that when I put a piece of rebar into a person and let go is very similar to Vibrating Strike. As the rebar slowly stopped vibrating out of sync with the rest of reality, it passed through a period where it was not entirely out of sync. His chest exploded like he had swallowed a stick of dynamite. Blood, bones, and guts splattered across the room. Gooey red shit flew everywhere.

“CHAD!” shouted the masked one as he racked the shotgun. “I’ll fucking kill you!” The double barrels of the shotgun boomed loudly in the small space.

I just turned around as the spray of pellets flew through me. I saw my stamina was really low. I hadn’t deactivated my phasing ability. I was beyond thinking, only reacting on instinct and fury. I grabbed the machete from my boot and rushed him. He was reloading. It didn’t matter. I swung the machete. He tried to block with the barrel of the shotgun, but the machete passed through it. Just before it passed through his chest, I activated Vibrating Strike. I felt my stamina drop to zero and staggered into the fresh corpse. I hit my knees, retched up my lunch, and struggled to breathe.

*Ting*

[You have slain a Mutant, Scavenger (F) (8) - Experience gained

Survivor Class bonus experience earned]

*Ting*

[You have slain an Anthro, Scavenger (F) (7) - Experience gained

First kill bonus experience earned

Survivor Class bonus experience earned]

Dammit! It didn’t have to be like this. I lay there, unable to do anything, panting and swearing.

“Fuck you, Chad! Fuck you, whoever you are! You didn’t have to take it this far.” Fuck.