When everything was sorted and the healing patches were divided amongst them, Sug, Ice and I leveled ourselves up. I had two new attribute points to place and it seemed like I was doing a hell of a lot of fighting these days, so I bumped my Wits 1 for the initiative bonus. And, honestly, looking back at things I realized how often I was punching stuff, so I decided to put the other point into Strength.

I also had a new card. I looked it over, and blanched while simultaneously blowing a raspberry. It sounded horrendous.

[https://i.imgur.com/bpooYtL.jpg]

Amalgamation

Level 1 (Very Rare) (3CP)

Activate to merge yourself with another being. Gain the powers of both. Duration 24 hours. Can only be used on other beings that give their permission to be temporarily absorbed.

If you tap and sacrifice this card, you may reset your stats and change to a monstrous race.

’The dark arts breed strange things. They twist and merge people, making them powerful beyond belief, sure. But it is a dark path, one that can lead to the man becoming a monster.’

That it might prove useful, I had no doubt about. And I was happy to see that it required cooperation from its targets. But there were a million ways to break a man and obtain that permission. The card had abuse written all over it.

I shook my head. I’d deal with the moral ramifications of all that if I was even able to learn it all. “We all ready here?” I asked my crew.

“Roger roger and all that, Poombah. Let’s get moving.”

The three of us walked over to the artillery pieces and scanned the horizon. Things were as they had left them. The two camps were still waiting for the other to make the first move. Hina was still atop the platform, watching, a little dot on top of the building.

Everyone was, in other words, still a bunch of sitting ducks.

“Ya know, I’ve gotta give credit to Deus Ex,” Ice commented. “These NPCs really do seem so target-friendly. I bet I would have had a great time doing their games at the Prestige Gaming Park.”

Sug grunted. He was over at the controls, moving them to target the ninja camp. We’d all expected something complicated but instead it was just three tabs labeled ‘Heso Marketplace’, ‘Nightclub Ninjas’, and ‘The Celestial Divine’.

The hard part, though, was following the instructions after they made their choice. Selecting the Nightclub Ninjas had led to a complicated minigame of twists and lever combinations that not only taxed the mind; they taxed the body as well.

“Screw you, Deus,” Sug yelled at the sky as he finally cranked the last piece into proper order. He was shiny with sweat and grime, and he looked for all the world like a turn of the century coal shoveler.

The three field pieces shook, their barrels retracted under the tremendous force of their shot. We raised our fists into the air and hooted and hollered as flamy splashdown confirmed the aim of our captured artillery.

I could imagine those stoic NPC sentries standing there like statues while the shells blazed through the sky. Never even able to react to the explosion that fired.

“Do it again!” I laughed wildly. This was going to be awesome. So easy too. I wondered if Deus would give us XPs.

Sug snarled. “No more ammo. Damn robot just jacked us.”

I gazed over at the flames that burned in the ninja camp. “Yeah. Maybe. I’m thinking if I were a ninja and I just got jacked like this, put into an unwinnable position, I’d charge. We better get back to the marketplace fast.”

The three of us broke into a sprint, rolling over terrain hard. It’d taken us half an hour to crawl, duck and dodge over here but now there was nothing to slow us down and the time was cut to almost 10 minutes.

Just enough time to see the ninjas beginning their assault.

Several were leaping from rooftop to rooftop, while a number were trying to follow down below at street level. Some were taking pot shots from below with plasma blasters and regular lead shot bullets, but the ones on the rooftops had blowguns, ninja stars, and melee weapons.

The second group showed themselves a second later, when a tank of a guy in ceremonial armor landed on the rooftop across from us. He pulled a katana with an eight foot blade off his shoulder and pointed it at us, and I got my first glimpse of his scarred face beneath the stylized ogre demon mask. Two more of his compatriots joined a second later.

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“Stand aside, gaijin,” the ninja hissed. I noted fur and cat’s eyes beneath the ninja face mask, and a long tail swishing back and forth behind it, puffed up with feline irritation.

“No can do, bub,” I replied. “That girl and I have unfinished bus–”

“Nightclub Ninjas?” Sug exclaimed. “Seriously? Poombah, they’re calling themselves the secret cabal of assassins who hang out in dance clubs. You really blew the element of mystery and surprise there, losers!” He barked out laughter, and soon his mecha suit was rolling around the rooftop with its mechanical arms holding its mechanical sides.

The ninja and I watched Sug for a few long moments before turning back to give each other the old stare down.

“Could you–”

“Yeah, sorry,” I replied.

“He’s your–”

“No, I get it, my bad,” I said. “He’s my guy.”

“We’re in a situation here. This really cuts through the tension.”

“Could you two hash out whatever this is and move it along?” one of the other ninjas called.

The leader ninja in the armor gestured back to the other as if to say See? Get it together.

I held my hands up in surrender. “Preaching to the choir, buddy. I’m more of a cat herder than a boss at this point.” Meanwhile Sug could be heard sobbing with laughter off to my left. Honestly I couldn’t blame him, but I was a little dismayed at all the minor debuffs being imposed for Charm checks against the Nightclub Ninjas.

His eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

“Look, I didn’t–”

“You say that again to my face,” the cat ninja hissed.

“Okay, listen–”

“Come on!” the dragon-helmed leader shouted. “Are we doing this or not?”

The cat ninja pointed a pawful of claws in my face. “I will tear–”

“Patches?” I asked casually.

There was a blur of neon light, and the cat ninja suddenly just wasn’t there any longer. Instead he was being mauled by doggo mech and getting crushed into the concrete of the rooftop. A second later several tiny explosions blew apart his buddy. These were coming down from Hina’s position.

I was already up by 100 reputation with her just for showing up and not shooting her like all these other idiots. That still put me at -200 overall, but I’d jump off that bridge when I came to it.

Flame gouted out into the night even as a light rain started up. The Nightclub Ninjas who hadn’t been KO’d already charged. And further back, I heard something mechanical… something as big as one of those Bonsai artillery pieces. And the rumbling whump whump whump of electronic music resonating from the soles of my shoes.

My people sprang into action at the same moment. Sug sprayed the place with minigun rounds, Ice started taking pot shots at people scaling the building walls, and Dragon opened up with his own plasma blaster. Patches swung the ninja cat over into another one of his buddies, and swept them both into the three foot retaining wall. They then went through the retaining wall and tumbled out into empty space.

The ninjas didn’t take much to put down, though they were nimble little buggers. Ninja stars and blow gun darts seemed to sprout out of the collapsible wall and the mecha suits, but though they rolled and pounced, the ninjas were punched and shot down seconds later. It wasn’t too hard to one-shot or two-shot them.

And, as a nice bonus, they were really easy to throw off the roof completely. It was like fetch, because as soon as one sailed off the roof, another one sprang up in its place. And more than once, a ninja sprang up over the retaining wall, only to take one of his friends full in the face, and send them both tumbling down four floors.

More armored guys were appearing over the side of the building, but fewer of the ninja-looking ones. That was on account of Ice taking out the ones climbing the buildings, who was racking up quite the kill count. This wasn’t my first battle with the boys, but it was the first time I’d noticed the little skulls appearing over their heads. I’d taken down two of the ninjas, Patches had gone through five, Dragon had wasted three, but Ice was already halfway through his second row.

Then the first of the big-armored guys was on me, and I had to use my precious plasma blaster melee style to block his prodigious sword.

Whump whump whump–

“Poombah?” Ice called.

“Little busy!” I blocked yet another attack, but took a sword pommel to the guts and fell back a few steps.

The leader snorted and sneered. “Focus, gaijin, because you are about to fall.”

We traded a few more attacks, with me trying to get a shot off. Meanwhile every time I did that, he’d dive aside and come in with a lightning fast attack. Cybernetic enhancement could hardly keep up.

“We got a problem,” Ice went on, even though he could see I was in the middle of some pretty intense cat and mouse attacking.

The leader was rushing at me. “Actually very busy!”

I dove aside, rolled to avoid being slashed in two, then felt the building shake beneath my feet. That whump whump whump from before was louder now. I realized the ninjas had been fighting to the beat.

“What the hell?”

–whump whump whump–

“I was tryin’ ta tell you, Poombah,” Ice jogged by me, spun to a kneeling position, and fired off a shot a second later. He’d barely gotten the shot off before he was back on his feet and backing away.

The ninja was also put off the attack. He staggered when the building shook again, and yet again.

–WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP–

A sleek, futuristic mech the size of two swoll grannies stacked on top of each other came slowly into view, plasma barrels from both of its arms staring me down. Electronic music blasted over the whole area, coming from big ass speakers set into the sides of said turret. And hanging from the barrel was a mirror ball, throwing sparkles of light every which way.

“That is a very big problem!” I screamed over the bass. The bass which, by the way, I could feel in the pit of my stomach.

“Sure is!” Ice called.

I dove aside while both barrels were still glowing with purple plasma. The attack came out with a catastrophic choom! sound and obliterated everything in its path. When the smoke and steam cleared, Sug’s mecha suit was missing one arm, and Phil’s collapsible shield had been cut in half.

Also, the armored leader had a big hole where half of his chest and one arm had been. He stared dumbly at the smoking wound, then quizzically at me, and finally toppled over a second later.

The turret continued awkwardly rising, now on an apartment-sized tank body, followed by the first of the mobile artillery’s spider legs. The ninjas had spray painted cowls with angry eyes glowing from within, and Japanese graffiti beneath. Spray painted along the barrel of the gun was Nightclub Infiltration Ninjas.

Nobody had the hardware to take that on. I’d thrown my grenades already in taking down the Bonsai monks, and plasma worked best on unarmored foes. What we needed was an entire bunker full of weapons that could even the playing field here.

But if we fled back to Nolan and the HQ, we’d lose the marketplace and fail the quest.

“Options?” I asked.

“What about your girlfriend’s weapons shop?” Ice asked. “She’s gotta have something to help us out.”

“Stay out of my shop!” Hina yelled from above. I frowned. Screw that, this battle was going to end here and now. Then we’d go have a chat with the last faction and get this whole mess done it time for breakfast tomorrow morning.

I turned and took them all in with my sweeping gaze.

“Hina’s shop. Doubletime. It’s time we end this.”