Incident Report - Date : [redacted]

(Translated from native to System Common)

Location: Hangzhou District

-begin excerpt-

The creature was on to me. I thought it was some sort of mutant, but it spoke to me in some language I didn’t understand. It was larger than human-sized but generally humanoid. A thick prehensile tail and a strange head made it even more clear that it wasn’t from Earth. The head was just a huge shark’s mouth, multiple rows of teeth and all. I didn’t see any eyes, ears, nose, or other sensory organs. Three fingers and a thumb on each side of the hand, feet were identical. The tip of the tail was a bulbous knot of frills and what might have been compound eyes.

No identifiable sex organs and its grey-white skin was more like shark skin than anything. It looked smooth but was rough and ridged when touched. I tried to get a picture, but any optical image was corrupted somehow. On film, it resembled a camera flare.

I had been trying to track down the creature for some time. I kept seeing it on my security cameras. When I finally found it, I tried to save the girl it was eating, but she was already dead. I know it was a girl because it left part of her torso behind after I shot it with the plasma rifle. Not that the plasma rifle did much more than warm it up.

It tried to jump me then, we grappled, and shit, it was strong. I’m a D-rank, and I couldn’t keep it from sinking those gnarly teeth into me. I found out that its joints were not one-way like a human joint. The arm lock I tried to put on it was pointless. Can’t over-extend a joint if it goes both ways.

I stomped the tail, and that’s what made it flee. I was bleeding from the bite on my arm, and the bleeding would not stop. I had to use one of those Blud-Stop packs made from shrimp shells to get the bleeding under control.

I am going back out tonight to see if I can catch it.

-end excerpt-

I sat on the front porch and watched the clean-up. Jason debriefed me and dropped 10k credits into my account. Bounty on the four I killed and reward for the warning and combat duty. Nice.

I later heard from Jason that the two mortar shots they got off were harmless. Blew up some old lady’s garden, and another wrecked an antique playground. Still not cool.

I sit there and think about the past few days, was killing people just a part of my life now? Four more dead at my hands. One of the guards brings me a canteen and offers a chem-stick. I refuse the chem-stick but take a drink from the canteen: water, boo. Wish it was something stronger.

Jason offers me the pick of the gear the four I killed. I don’t want the Puritan hard armor. Even repainted, it still looked evil. Guns? Nope, got enough guns. I even gave Jason the M4 I had been using for the guards. I tell him to slide me a couple of cases of shotgun shells when he can instead.

I pack myself out, returning to where I started this escapade. I have to kill a few rats to reclaim my stack of tails. I peek at my experience counter and am 5330 up for the day. After some easy math, one Puritan is only worth 500 experience. The math was too easy, must be my increased intellect. What a miserable payout for such a dangerous opponent. No wonder no one hunts Puritans for fun and profit.

I shudder at the thought. Even a wholesale slaughter of them was something I would have never considered before the past few days. They were people. Weren’t they? Sure they were homicidal maniacs, but they were still people. I leave that line of thought alone. Too much to unpack there.

Guns are the great equalizer, at least until D-rank. Then they become as dangerous as a kitchen knife. Right now, they sure cause injury and could have killed me. Even with my regeneration and phasing, I got shot a couple of times and came close to getting shot a lot more. Maybe I should have taken some of the hard armor. Nah, soon enough, it won’t be worth having. Coveralls, hardhat with face shield, rebar, I must be a picture of heroics.

Laughing, I scoop up the fourteen tails and head home.

As I walk, I drop 5k experience into Explorer to raise it to five.

*Ting*

[Occupation: Explorer has reached level 5, skill available]

Whoot! I like skills. I swap screens and look at the selections.

Please select one skill.

1. Advanced Mapping (F)

Cost: None

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Duration: Constant

Increases the details gained from passive mapping. Reduces time required for experience gained from exploration.

2. Beginner Stealth (F)

Cost: None

Duration: Constant

Increases the success rate of all stealth-related activities. Reduces the value of opposing perception.

3. Reduced Requirements (F)

Cost: None

Duration: Constant

Greatly reduces the body’s needs, including food, water, oxygen, and sleep.

Huh, sort of lackluster in the selections. Advanced Mapping was out as I figured it would add to my already robust mapping and was therefore redundant. Reduced Requirements was interesting, but I wasn’t starving for anything right now. Maybe I could deprive myself for a while and get that one from training. That was something I had been thinking of was how to train skills outside of skill selection time. I had gotten my weapon skill from that method. Unintentionally for sure, but still.

I selected Beginner’s Stealth, and I felt an immediate shift in how I moved. My steps moved from heel-toe to the ball of my foot. The placement of my feet also changed; unconsciously, I stepped on less noisy junk. That was cool. I spent too much time hiding from bad guys in the last day not to appreciate the little bit of stealth that was added.

Feeling pretty good about myself, I headed home. I bundled up my bloody clothes and decided I needed to get my own place on the ground floor. Somewhere I wouldn’t be tracking bloody, watery messes through the halls. I could easily afford it after today.

Lina was waiting for me. She had been worried about me. Word got to her that I had been wrapped up in the Puritan raid. That was true, so I told her and Tukey the story over dinner.

I spent the rest of the evening kicking around and doing nothing exciting. Truth be told, I was bored. I wanted to hunt something bigger than rats, and I didn’t exactly know what there was to hunt besides maybe rotters, rats, and Puritans. I decided that sneaking off to see Meera was not on the schedule for the night. So I slept.

In the morning, I headed down to the bounty office and looked over the bounty board: rats, rotters, Puritans, mutant hornets, and some kind of mutant bear-wolf. The hornets were a strong nope. These were not the hornets from when I was messing around with the cows. These things were almost a person’s size and could carry off children. There was a new nest to the south of the city that the bounty covered. Each stinger was worth 500 credits, and proof of the nest’s destruction was 5000 more. There was even a map. Big money for big danger. Also out of my league.

The bear-wolf thing was interesting. There was a pack of mutant creatures to the north of the city. Descriptions were mixed, but big, furry, big claws and sharp teeth were all common. They had menaced one of the trade caravans that came through from Chi-town.

I needed lots more experience, and killing hundreds of rats would not be fun. I thought about trying to find something bigger, more dangerous, and worth quite a bit more. These bear-wolves seemed like just the thing.

I stopped by the guard house and checked in with Jason. He slid me a box of shotgun rounds with a smile. They had recovered the three five-ton trucks and one of the mortars. He told me that the prisoners were being questioned to see if a new offensive was coming soon or if this was just a raid. No one in town wanted to be caught unaware of a Puritan offensive. Their Precinct was a military outpost for the Puritan city known as Loyalty. It was in the center of old Pittsburg, just a few hours away by truck.

I had my usual kit and headed north. The bounty said something about the old highway 33. It was as good a place as any for s start. I biked north along the old freeway. The old roads were crap but mostly paved. Someone on foot or a bike could easily navigate around the shifted broken cement chunks.

The bike was a treat. I zipped along far faster than I could have in a car or jeep. Machines needed to move on their timeline. Man-powered items could be pushed to the material limits—a motor needed to rev up and accelerate. Pedals could be pushed as hard as the steel would allow. The old bike creaked and groaned as I pedaled far harder than I had ever before. My new strength pushing it to the limits.

I zipped past other scavengers, none of them trying to slow me down or mess with me. I switched roads a couple of times, but in a little over an hour, I was headed northwest on old highway 33. I knew there was a little town out this way, but I hadn’t been there before.

I rolled along the highway, letting my mapping and vibration sense abilities cover the surrounding area. My explorer experience was ticking up nicely.

I pushed on for another hour before I saw a ruined city in the distance. The small enclave of Groundhog-anthros was to the south of this place. A farming community that traded with Free Columbus but otherwise kept to themselves. I didn’t want to bother them, but I'd stop and ask if I saw one on my way through the small town.

Old Marysville had been a picturesque small town before the fall. I could see many old buildings that had once been beautiful stone and cement works of art. Small-town America in detail. Now they were moss and ivy-covered hulks. The road I rolled down was only clear of plants due to the semi-regular traffic.

I didn’t really see anyone as I passed through. I sensed a few folks, but these folks were keeping their heads down as I passed. That told me they did not want to be disturbed, and I respected that. You never knew what someone would do until it was too late.

I felt the wind shift as I passed north out of the old ruins. Rain was coming from the southwest, and it might be a torrential downpour. It might miss me completely. I figure that out if it gets too nasty.

I pull off to the side and hide in an old gas station when I feel the rumble of oncoming trucks—a caravan of vehicles coming from the north. New Wayne and Chi-town were both in that direction. New Wayne was once Fort Wayne and was a mutant city. I’d have to demonstrate being a variant to be safe there. They didn’t like the Puritans, and I could most easily pass as a Puritan.

As nine trucks rolled up, I sat behind the cracked and crumbling wall inside the old petrol station. The first two had top-mounted machine guns, as did the last. The middle truck was a small fuel truck. The rest were old panel vans. This was a trade caravan. As I sat there waiting, I felt the trucks roll to a stop in the middle of the road and park in a herringbone pattern.

Oh, shit. Had I been spotted?