Jill flung herself around the center seat she’d just been leaning against, her forearm clamped over her eyes to keep out the scouring light. The wheel slid sideways and came to rest under her outstretched hand, responding to her desire to take over from Bobby. She pulled Bertha into a tight turn, desperate to get armor and not windows between the nova-bright storm cloud and her. Seconds later the maneuver was complete and the heat on her skin winked out; at least that bit of it that was really from her own nerves and not from her connection to Bertha, whose armor still burned.
She tried to open her eyes, but even the light reflecting off the ground ahead of her was too bright to bear. A tiny part of her brain cataloged that she hadn’t been hit by a reflection from the side mirrors. Those had melted away.
Jill’s senses expanded into Bertha and she felt rather than saw Karen haul herself off of the floor and back into the seat behind her console.
“Medics to the cab!” Karen croaked, her voice betraying her pain. She swayed, only her grip on the console’s sides keeping her from falling back to the floor.
Bobby had staggered away from his chair the moment Jill had willed the steering wheel away, hands clasped to his face. “Sonofagun!” he yelled as he tripped over Babu’s fallen form and fell to the floor. He tried to stand but didn’t succeed.
“Bobby,” Jill said, “stay down until the medics get here. You’re out of this fight.” She sunk a tiny bit of Mana into Customization and summoned a localized, rippling wave of metal in the deck, propelling the two of them to the back of the cab, farther away from the windows.
“Gunners,” Aman said, voice pained but level despite having been hit just as bad as Bobby, “swap for replacements. You’re no good blind.” The current set of gunners were the best in the truck, but they couldn’t be on duty all the time. Two other full crews waited in the same room that the Bards played in, ready for just this situation, or worse.
“Pain in the taint!” Jill swore as a lightning bolt from behind blew a chunk of armor off of the rear cargo doors. She hauled the wheel over in a blind dodge and this time Jill rocked to the side, just a bit. Somewhere on Bertha the armor had been breached, and that gap was enough to degrade the Inertial Resistance.
“Cargo Nexus,” Jill shouted, wresting the communication power back under her control for an instant, “we’re holed! Get ready in case -” The flare winked out, its power spent, and Jill swallowed at the sudden cessation of pain. She dropped her arm and opened her eyes, but her vision was still obscured, covered in multicolored blobs and streaks.
Jill’s status popped up in front of her without her prompting, perfectly visible in front of the riot of colored shapes. The active Condition flashed at her.
Jill MacLeod
Class: Battle Trucker Level: 100
HP: 2012/2070 MP: 3027/3090 XP: 5,779,484/4,950,000
Conditions: Storm Flashed
“Hemorrhoid-popping, corn-studded, period shit!” Jill yelled, pushing 600 mana into Swampwater Vitality. Her magic scoured away the lingering spots, a mere physical ailment no match for the power of profanity.
Jill leaned forward to scan the sky for where the next attack was coming from, ready to pull the truck into an evasive slide. A twist of Mana into Hold Together and the side mirrors pulled themselves back together, restoring her backward view. The storm cloud was gone, replaced by dozens of wisp-trailing horses, each galloping across the empty sky in a different direction. The herd had decided to cut and run, to save as many of themselves as they could. But the boss, the one with the intelligence to make that kind of decision, was nowhere to be seen.
The door at the rear of the cab, an armored metal hatch, swung open and a teenage boy wearing a faintly glowing white doctor’s coat leaped through. “Who’s dying?” he yelled, hands already glowing with pink Mana that clashed with his dyed-black hair, blood-red nail polish, and silver nose ring. The sight of him dragged Jill’s attention away from looking for threats; the last time she’d seen him he’d been in anime-covered pajamas, his hair had been a different color, and he’d been piercing-free.
“Sam,” Karen said to him, fear in her voice, “Babu’s unconscious.”
At the same time, Katie yelled “That fucking monster blinded us!”
There was a flash of pink magic as the young doctor activated a movement power, coming to a stop next to the prone and still form of Babu. “He’ll be fine,” he said after a moment, “just too low-Level to deal with this condition. It’s actually going to take some tricky stat substitution in order to -”
“If he’s stable, leave him,” Jill interrupted him, shouting over her shoulder. “Cure the gunners first, then work your way through the cab. Sorry Karen, Aman, but we need our firepower back!”
“So, what, I’m just supposed to sit here?” Katie asked.
“It’s called triage, grease monkey,” Sam huffed, “but since I’m here, you get the rush job.” he flicked his hand. A storm of pink petals rushed from his fingers and surrounded Katie’s head in a fluttering halo. Then it condensed onto her eyes, electing a shriek of pain.
“That didn’t have to hurt,” he said. “But you deserved it!”
“Sam!” Jill snapped as she put Bertha through an evasive slalom. “Pull your dick out of your mouth and get to work!”
The doctor gave an “eep!” sound and ran out the door. Jill shook her head and scanned the sky. “Where is that thing?” she muttered and took Bertha into another evasive juke, just in case.
“Gunners,” Aman said, “use any observation powers and find that Boss.”
“I/We are looking!” the hive said back, its mixed combination of new voices uncertain.
The job was done for them when an unnaturally large lightning bolt struck the ground where Bertha had been just a moment before. Out of the ensuing burning cloud of grass and dirt emerged the Storm Steed. The monster was a black stallion, 30 feet tall at the shoulder and trailing a billowing cloak of violet-lightning-shot storm cloud. Crackles of heat lightning steamed off its flanks in lieu of sweat as it leaped back into the sky, gaining the high ground before charging in pursuit of Bertha. It opened its mouth and shrieked, revealing massive, sharp obsidian teeth, and a gaping, hungry void where its tongue and throat should be.
“Eat bees, fucker!” the Hivemind yelled.
The turrets roared and a half dozen streams of 50 caliber bullets cut through the air. This close they couldn’t miss and the boss was so set on its pursuit that it wasn’t even trying to dodge. Hundreds of rounds hit in the next few seconds, each one carving a divot from flesh in an explosion of black, bloody mist, and the monster screamed again, this time in pain rather than rage. But while the boss’ heaving skin looked like nothing so much as a golf ball, it was reforming as quickly as it was being carved away. It was faster than before, but not fast enough, and Bertha kept pulling away. The louder ripsaw sound of Blossom joined those of the machine guns; Mia might be blind, but someone else had taken over her gun.
The steed changed tactics and dove for the ground. Its front hooves hit the ground with a twin flash of lightning, then the rear, and the grass caught fire. It pulsed with power, the ground cratered underneath it, and its form dissolved as it flashed forward.
Pain erupted in Jill’s side. Armor groaned and bent inwards as the attack struck home, the blow powerful enough to push the 150 or so tons of Bertha that existed outside of its dimensional bubble off course. Jill slammed on the brakes and whipped the wheel around, flinging Bertha’s trailer around and hoping to smash the monster under the wheels before it withdrew from its attack.
The truck jackknifed and Jill realized that her move had been useless. The Storm Steed had abandoned its physical form to become a writhing mass of cloud and lightning, clinging to Bertha as the truck twisted around, scouring the armor with blades of wind and blasts of electricity. Jill flicked on the Eel Paint and Bertha’s own lightning crackled over the armor, but it didn’t seem to do anything to the clinging, incorporeal, electric monster.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“BAD PREY!” Tammy’s scream rattled the cab as Bertha again jumped in a new direction, the 200-foot-long wyvern slamming into it at high speed.
“Feathers!” Jill swore as her vision was interrupted by massive flapping wings and a feathered tail. Tammy had wrapped her many-times-longer, sinuous body over and around Bertha, and the truck bucked and heaved as her claws tore into the Storm Steed. A surge of magic accompanied every flash of the wyvern’s claws, forcing the storm back into its physical form for a split second each time, just in time to be torn. Blood trailed the speeding truck in great arcs before boiling away into angry black mist as Tammy defended her friend.
Jill gasped as the gouging pain stopped, the Storm Steed retreating away from Tammy’s seeking talons. Bertha’s armor was under 40% and pierced through in multiple places. The durability was still fine, but they had taken far more damage than she had thought possible before the fight began.
“I’m- I’m-,” gasped Katie. There was a stutter in Bertha’s repairs as she collapsed into a chair, nearly unconscious from low Mana and her powers failed, before the next person on the repair rota, Mal, threw out his hands in dramatic fashion. He was the youngest person in the cab, barely 17, and had the unlikely Class of Cake Apprentice, but his confectionary touch-up Powers worked just fine repairing Bertha.
“FEAR ME, PREY!” Tammy bellowed and launched herself off of Bertha, causing the truck to sink on its suspension. A glowing portal appeared right in front of her nose and the wyvern disappeared through it.
The lightning cloud reformed to their right and a quarter mile away, its storm cloak in tatters even if its flesh was still whole, and it galloped away.
Jill let out a huff, annoyed at her own jealousy that the monster was afraid of Tammy but not Bertha. For a moment she wasn’t sure what was the right thing to do. She could keep driving, turn the wheel over and point them east, and just press down on the accelerator until the boss disappeared from the radar screen. Every second that she didn’t act was another second at hundreds of miles an hour bringing them away from danger, and at the end of the day, that might be enough.
“Fuck that,” she snarled and instead turned them in pursuit. She hadn’t gone through all of that pain to flee from a beaten enemy, especially not with backup flying somewhere overhead. “We’re killing this thing before it comes back for a second pass,” she rationalized aloud. She closed the range until they couldn’t miss, then eased off on the accelerator, matching the Storm Steed’s speed.
“H. E. Double hockey sticks,” Yasmin in one of the turrets chimed out, “the bullets aren’t doing damage anymore!”
“I/We concur with our constituent,” the hive said, “the monster has become purely cloud.”
“This pony is such a pain in my godamn tits!” Jill said. “Ideas?”
“Switch weapons to flamethrowers,” Aman said, still blind, “boil the cloud away. And if that doesn’t work, switch to phasic ammunition.”
Most of the flamethrowers were backup weapons, made by the crafters in Berthaville’s workshop from whatever fire-aspected magic items they could scrounge together and left in the back of the turrets in case of close-range emergency. None were high-level items that would normally be a threat to a level 92 boss. But any weapon mounted in Bertha’s turrets was boosted up to the stats of an Uncommon weapon of the module’s effective level: Jill’s own Level 100 plus 1 for every Power in the module taken. They would burn the steed just fine, and if they somehow didn’t then there was one flamethrower that was definitively not classified as ‘backup’, a Soulbound weapon belonging to Dan. It wasn’t quite as powerful as Mia’s Blossom because he had sunk far fewer Class Points into it than she had, but it was leagues above merely Uncommon.
Changing strategies would be another gamble because none of the flamethrowers could fire very far. The Storm Steed had proven to be at its most dangerous clinging to Bertha and sawing away in melee range, and closing to fry it would give it the chance to do just that. But even though Mal too had collapsed from running out of Mana, there were still 4 more members of the repair crew left in the cab, using their repair powers alongside Jill. Bertha could take a few more hits.
“Do it!” Jill said and floored it. The boss monster turned its head at the sound of Bertha’s roaring Mana engine, its gaze meeting Jill’s. Maybe she was imagining it, but she saw fear there, and she peeled her lips back in what could only barely be described as a grin.
The sound of gunfire cut off as the gunners followed her order. Notification boxes tried to appear in Jill’s vision as the Add-on guns were removed, and again when the flamethrowers were installed, but she kept them suppressed.
“I’m here!” Sam said, breathless from having run to the front of the cab after he’d finished curing the A team of gunners. Jill wondered for a moment how low his Body score must be, but dismissed it. He didn’t need Body, he needed Spirit to work healing magic. Pink mana flashed as Sam poked Aman in the cheek.
“Thank you,” Aman said and blinked rapidly. “We’re nearly in range for the flamethrowers,” he said, a hint of hunger in his usually stoic voice.
Sam spun to Jill but she waved him off. “I’m fine,” she said without taking her eyes off of the chase. It changed its course to try and throw them off, but the horse’s hooves still flashed lightning every time they touched the grass-covered plain, leaving an easy-to-follow trail of fire and smoke behind it. It activated its lightning-based movement ability 3 more times in quick succession, but Bertha kept thundering behind it, closing the distance.
It only took the truck half a minute to finally close to flamethrower range. A blazing, billowing double cone of fire shot out from the forward turret as Dan pulled the dual triggers on his own, normally backpack-mounted, Soulbound weapon. Bertha’s Mana dipped under the drain, but it was power well spent.
The Storm Steed turned from black cloud to flaming tornado as it whirled in place, lunging back at Bertha, and was met by 6 more streams of fire. It went straight for the truck’s front windows, plastering itself over them and blocking out the daylight, leaving only blackness interspersed with purple lightning. Screeching noises filled the control center as its blades of wind tried to cut and lightning tried to blast through the armored windshield mere feet in front of Jill’s face.
“Changing our configuration,” Aman announced and his magic connected to the Customization console in front of him. The turret atop the cab shifted forward, as did the forward two on the trailer’s sides, so that they had an angle to fire at the clinging monster.
Jill’s face bubbled through her Soulbond as the flames washed over the cab, scorching off paint and melting the surface of the crystal window. The combination of monster and friendly fire would have quickly led to a breach anywhere else on the truck, especially considering all the damage it had already taken, but unfortunately for the boss monster, it had chosen the most heavily reinforced part of Bertha to attack. The Fortress of the Throne upgrade to the Command Module gave the whole cab an independent layer of extra protection just as strong as the full Armor Module.
But it still hurt, as if someone was taking a blowtorch to Jill’s face. She reached into herself and mentally squeezed on her connection to Bertha, trying to dull the sensations. That helped, but it was a cure worse than the disease; it felt like she had her hands wrapped around her own throat and was choking herself to unconsciousness, all in order to ignore a sunburn. She let her Soulbond flow free and endured the pain instead.
The Storm Steed flowed off of Bertha and reformed, what remained of the gigantic stallion’s skin blistered and blackened. The rest was gone entirely; cooked muscle, oozing blood and alien purple ichor with every flex, was exposed in its place. It turned away from Bertha and tried to gallop back into the sky in a futile effort to again run, but the damage was too much. After just a few steps the air gave out beneath its hooves and it fell to the ground.
Bertha spun in one more turn and Jill lined them up with the fallen boss monster. The Mana engine roared as the truck shot forward. The horizon tilted down as Bertha slammed into and over the monster. It was high enough level and tough enough that it might have been able to take the weight, but Bertha’s wheels weren’t just for driving; they were upgraded by the Brutal Wheels power to be as powerful weapons in their own right as the guns in the turrets, if constrained to killing only whatever the driver could catch under them. The Mana gauge shot upwards as the boss died, its power consumed by yet another wheel upgrade.
Superior Storm Stallion defeated. Bonus experience awarded for killing a Superior monster (+1.0)
Your Contribution: 23%
4,232 Experience Gained!
“Ooh rah!” “Take that you fart-cloud!” “Oh, thank fuck…” a mess of voices all sounded at once, both in the cab and from the turrets.
“Eat shit horse thing,” Jill joined in the trash talk, but her heart wasn’t in it. She slumped back in the driver’s seat, her grip relaxing a fraction from the wheel, and kept pushing her Mana into Hold Together, helping to stitch Bertha’s scorched and slashed armor back together. Her skin still felt as if it were cut open in a thousand places, but those cuts were now pulling themselves closed, bit by bit. She eased up on the accelerator and put Bertha into a sweeping curve, back towards the fallen corpse of the Superior Storm Steed.
“Get ready for looting,” she projected to the cargo bay.
“Understood,” Ras replied.
As Bertha passed by the broken monster, Jill reached out with her Cargokinesis and wrapped the body firmly with strands of telekinetic will. The boss was large enough that while she could get a solid grip on the body its neck and head, still crackling with stray electricity and gushing blood, lay outside the power’s range. It flopped and dragged over the ground as Jill reeled the monster in.
The truck’s rear doors opened, too small for the corpse to fit through. While Jill, or anyone interfaced with the control console in the cab linked to her Customization power, could expand it into a wide enough mouth, she didn’t have to. Instead, the stallion exploded into motes of light as Ras Looted the creature, allowing the System to break the dead monster down into pure magic before reforming it as a new, usable object. Jill’s Cargokinesis didn’t let her see what she was manipulating, but the new loot was small and very heavy. She yanked it into the trailer and Ras shut the doors.
“Well that clusterfuck is finally o-” she started to say, but cut herself off. The ground had dropped away from beneath Bertha for an instant before slamming back into place, leaving behind giant radiating cracks and the occasional toppled tree. “Contact!” Jake on the radar’s voice cracked in panic. There was another tremor, then a third; they were in time, as if something massive were striding their way, shaking the ground with every even-paced step. “It’s - It’s - level is over 200!!”
“Remind me to keep my cursed mouth shut,” Jill said. “We’re gone!”