The Misfits were waiting on the Asteroid outside the space station waiting to hear what Krok and Cheezus found. Deathberry knew that something was wrong a few minutes after they’d heard that Krok and Cheezus had entered the space station. Typically, Tim knew that Cheezus would provide updates every minute or so and when he didn’t that was enough set Tim to analyzing where they had made their mistake. Tim quickly whispered a message to both Cheezus and Krok individually. One of them usually would respond with at a minimum TBTT. After another thirty seconds went by he’d hadn’t heard back from either of them. Their raid status bars were also showing up grey which indicated that they were in another zone.

He alerted the raid what was going on. “Cheezus and Krok aren’t responding to any communications and their raid status bars are greyed out. I suspect we may have underestimated the situation,” Deathberry said in raid chat.

Smash cursed, “That’s the understatement of the day. Looks like this was a trap and we just fell for it. Zeffu switch to DPS. Everyone look alive and check above and below you as well. I suspect the enemy will be here any moment. Also, spread out.”

The Misfits responded just in time as several missiles exploded around the raid. It was hard to tell where they had come from but they must have been fired from the orbit of the Asteroid. Fortunately, Thag had thrown out unholy absorption at the last second or they would likely have been blown apart. As it was the damage logs scrolled at the bottom of Deathberry’s vision as a scary array of red numbers. Zeffu had taken the brunt of the damage being at the center of the attack:

-370 exploding

-187 exploding

-420 fire

Linca was already healing her up as Smash threw a shield ally spell on her. That would give her a few more precious seconds to stabilize Zeffu’s health bar before the next attack. Speaking of which, Deathberry caught sight of another missile before it impacted the group this time. He fired off several of his unholy bolts at the missile and it blew apart before it could reach the Misfits.

Deathberry had little time to celebrate; however, since more enemies zoomed across the grey rock of Daphne 41 towards the group. Instead of missiles, these creatures appeared to be metal spiders. Their tag read Ziron Spider – Level ?. That was never a good sign. Each one of these was some unknown level and there appeared to be hundreds coming towards them.

One came straight at him and attempted to stab him with all eight of its legs at once. He deftly dodged out of the way and returned the favor by casting a couple of deathbeams at it. Despite losing several legs the spider was resilient enough to come back and stab at him with one of its remaining pointed metal tarsus.

-180 stabbing

Being the first time that Deathberry had taken damage, he was surprised at how much that seemed to hurt. Champions had also had its biofeedback loops setup to reward pleasure and penalize pain in game, yet AO took this to another level. He would have to remember not to repeat that experience or he might lose his lunch. Dying would be an even more unpleasant experience and although he had died many times in Champions he’d never gotten used to it. In AO he might go insane due to the level of in-game realism. Considering that the Misfits used in-game depths to learn and eventually beat boss strategies that meant they were going to have to reassess the way they fought entirely. 

Deathberry nearly got stabbed again as we as assessing the situation. No time to assess the situation, he conjured a series of unholy bolts and flung them in rapid succession at the creature. The first couple shots went wild but the last two struck home.

-251 unholy damage

-345 unholy damage

-45 overkill

Finally freed of having an enemy in his face, he looked around to see how the rest of the Misfits were faring. He couldn’t recall a time when things had looked worse. Smash and Thag were so covered with spider creatures that he couldn’t see them except for an occasional attack or spell effect. Linca’s mana bar was nearly empty and Zeffu was fending off four of the creatures trying to keep them from getting to their healer. Deathberry assessed the situation coldly attempting to figure out some strategy to salvage their scenario.

It was looking grim. There wasn’t any clear-cut ability that any one of these creatures had that made them fearsome; however, in a swarm of a hundred they were deadly effective. From the wreckage of many spider bodies that floated next to them in space he could see that the Misfits had managed to kill over half the spiders but there were still over a hundred on Smash and Thag. Seconds later he saw Thag’s health bar go to zero. If this had been a raid Smash or Deathberry would have called for a wipe by now but with only one set of Gears on this asteroid if they died so did any hope of completing the mission. Deathberry didn’t know what the consequences would be with their employer but it was unlikely to be good.

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Using one of his most powerful spells, Deathberry channeled one hand toward Smash and with the other he cast an unholy light towards the spiders that had overwhelmed Thag. He destroyed dozens of them and pushed that energy towards their tank in an effort to keep Smash up. Unfortunately, he knew this was a temporary measure. Eventually several of the creatures broke away from Smash’s AOE taunts and came straight for Deathberry. He was able to fend several of them off before he felt the hot burning pain of having a three-foot steel spider leg driven through his chest.

***You have died in AO***

Tim had to concur with his earlier assessment. Dying in AO hurt like hell. He woke up screaming in pain in his pod, as his trembling hands pulled the micro-transmitter from the back of his ear. Over the next few minutes he got to witness the rest of the group who hadn’t died yet go through the same horrific experience. Dr. Thompson watched them with a worried face. Yeah, the public probably wasn’t ready for a game as realistic as this one. It didn’t take a psychologist to figure that out.

The group recovered quickly although it was clear that several were shaken. Kevin in particular looked like he’d seen his own ghost. Miles, who Tim knew had arachnophobia, was handling things well considering what had killed them. Alison was pale but holding it together, Shelly (Zeffu’s player) was holding her shoulders and sobbing quietly. Sean’s face was drawn tightly. Tim imagined he probably had a similar look. Even though the group was used to wiping a lot in Champions this particular wipe had been more realistic than anything they’d ever experienced. Additionally, it didn’t seem like they had learned anything useful about how to go up against these creatures – all they knew was that they swarmed ceaselessly. Lastly, the most painful part was that this was supposed to be a fairly straight-forward recon mission and it was their first mission using the gears which were real-life counterparts to their in-game avatars. It was doubtless that these gears were rare and expensive. Not to mention that it would be another week or so before more gears could be deployed. This was a setback that would take more than a minute to bounce back from.

After a few somber moments, Sean finally spoke, “I won’t mince words – that was an embarrassing lapse in judgement and we reacted poorly.”

Kevin interrupted, “You think?”

Miles shot Kevin a glare, “And what would you have done differently?”

Kevin and Miles started arguing before Tim cut them off. “Stop. This isn’t how we handle things. Legitimate criticism, no matter how poorly phrased isn’t something we’ll ignore. However, let’s not get into an argument about who was at fault. We operate as a team: win, lose, or draw. Kevin, if you have an actual strategic suggestion, let’s hear it. If not, let’s move on and figure out how to beat this area.”

Kevin glared at Miles for a moment before shrugging his shoulders.

Before the group could continue with what they were discussing, they were interrupted again by Dr. Thompson.  “Excuse me but I think we have a bigger problem than just the fact that you wiped on the space station mission,” the doctor said. “Take a look at the command center monitors showing outside the bunker.”

Tim’s eyes shot towards the monitors. He hadn’t bothered to look at them since he’d awoken in his pod. There was static on every screen. That didn’t make any sense. Some of those monitors were remote stations on other parts of the continent, some were around the world.

“Can you explain this, doctor?” Tim asked.

She shook her head. Her normally calm demeanor drawn with worry. “I don’t have an explanation; however, I received a coded message from Mr. Tiel ten minutes ago. Instead of explaining I think you should watch the message,” Dr. Thompson replied.

“Computer begin playing Mr. Tiel’s most recent message,” she said. Tim noticed that Dr. Thompson didn’t ask for the normal AI that ran AO and most of the bunker – Aeon.

The lights dimmed in the room a bit and the recording came on the center monitor right in front of them. “Hello Misfits. Hopefully, your use of the new gears on the asteroid 41 Daphne was successful. However, given the current situation I won’t be too surprised if that isn’t the case. Five minutes ago, I was warned by the CEO of FbcastWarnerBros that an AI of theirs had gone rogue and taken over their computer systems. For him to call me things must be quite dire indeed.”

Mr. Tiel continued on as the Misfits sat rapt watching the screen. He continued, “I’ve directed Aeon to duplicate itself and have sent the duplicate to the bunker you are in and lock out any outside net connection. Hopefully, this does not disrupt your field exercise, but if it halts mid-way through you’ll know it was necessary to keep Aeon safe. The original has gone over to attempt to subdue this rogue AI. Aeon assures me that he has a 99.9% chance of success; however, should he fail it is quite possible that the rogue AI would destroy him and take over the world net services. That would have unprecedented consequences with the potential to disrupt virtually all of humanity and all AI and robotics too.”

Their boss paused on screen to let that sink in. “Should the worst happen is why I have that bunker in the Nandewar Mountains. You, Aeon, and the doctor should be safe there. If you do not receive another transmission from me in ten minutes you should assume the worst.”

Tim looked at his Seemi that overlaid his irises. Twelve minutes had passed since Mr. Tiel’s message.