I cower away towards the edge of the roof as Mom stomps in my direction. I nearly push Emily off, and she in turn actually pushes Jessica, who slips down a few rungs.

“The hell?” Jessica yells from below, but her cries go ignored.

“I don’t want to hear it!” Mom explodes. “I saw you from the window and you're not going out there to do that again!”

Even though she barely reaches up to Pops's chest, her outburst makes him back away from her. Usually she’s the supportive cheerleader kind, but it’s the rare moments like this one that led to us needing the we fucked up and we'll talk about it later when your mother isn't around signal.

Because when Mom truly explodes, she goes thermonuclear.

“Mom—” I start, but she shuts me up.

“No, I won’t have any of it!”

She grabs my arm and tries to pull me away. Normally I’d go along with it, but not this time. With my increased strength attribute, she can’t as much as budge me.

“Jack, come on!” She cries, tugging my arm. “Please. You can’t…”

Her voice unravels into a pitiful whimper, and she looks back at me with betrayal when I don’t move to follow her. Pops stands a little distance away, diverting his eyes to look at his feet. The others, who all made it up on the roof by now, stand behind me in silence.

“Mom.”

“Please. You can’t. If you die, I’ll…”

I pull her into a hug, and she breaks down crying into my arms.

“I have to,” I whisper.

“You don’t! Your father will go!” She whips her head around to look at Pops, who doesn’t make eye contact. “Won’t you, Thomas?!”

Pops stays silent, regarding us with a side glance. I shake my head, and he takes the hint to keep his mouth shut.

“I’m going, Mom. That’s final.”

She buries her face in my chest, wailing louder. I hug her a little tighter, dumbstruck.

----------------------------------------

Mom cries for a few minutes until her grief runs dry, complaining about anything and everything. The deaths, the destruction, the danger. She cries for me, then for Mike, then she finally notices how much blood I have on me and she cries for me again.

I just hold her, occasionally telling her that it’ll all be okay.

It strikes me how different — how raw — her reaction is. The rest of us here, we’re all fighters. We took to the system, to the monsters, to the madness — not because we wanted to but because we needed to. We all put our reactions on hold, we shelved the trauma for later so we could focus.

But Mom isn’t a fighter, she isn’t like us. She’s like the people crowded in the apartment buildings — the ones that ran away from the monsters when they appeared, not towards them.

I’m at a loss, I don’t know how to deal with this. Short of not going, I don’t know what to say or do to soothe her.

In the end, Pops comes over and takes her from me. He gently guides her aside and sits down with her, slowly talking her back into a more coherent state of mind.

I just stare, feeling woefully inadequate. Jessica comes up from behind, puts a hand on my shoulder, and she shakes her head when I turn to regard her.

“Don’t worry,” she says, sounding uncharacteristically serious. “You’ll get better at it in time.”

She then shoots Emily a quick glance, who’s been staring at her feet the entire time.

“I hope so,” I say, and we leave it at that.

----------------------------------------

After Mom calms down somewhat, Pops pulls me aside to talk. They gave guns and ammo to a bunch of the people who recently picked their classes, which includes Mom. She spent the last battle shooting monsters from a window until she ran dry.

She only got twelve kills or so, but considering she's a novice class, she jumped up to level 4. But she also saw me running around like a madman, with no regard for my own safety as I fought what appeared like an endless tide of monsters to her.

“When it was done, she rushed to the front door and demanded to see you,” Pops explains. “I tried to keep her up there, but she threatened to cut off my balls in my sleep.”

“Don't worry about it.”

Mom gets ready to leave, but before she does, she casts the two buffs she has on all of us.

Sophia Harrington - Level 4 Elementary Teacher has cast Teacher's Blessing.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Effects: All experience gains are boosted by 2%.

Duration: 30 minutes.

Sophia Harrington - Level 4 Elementary Teacher has cast Fast Learner.

Effects: you acquire and level general skills 5% faster.

Duration: 1 hour.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You better come back alive,” she says. “Hear that, Thomas? He better come back alive!”

“He will, honey,” Pops assures her as he helps her down the ladder.

I take a deep breath and get back into gear. With Mom gone, we return to the preparations. I tell Pops about the plan, and with each word coming out of my mouth, he looks more and more shocked.

“Even if it goes perfectly, your mother might just have my balls anyway for letting you attempt it,” he says.

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

He sends word to the other defenders so they’ll all know what’s up, and a few minutes later, someone brings us the rest of what we need. A few pound bombs from Kurt, which are just mines without triggers, as well as some pillow cases and various bits of metal like screws and nails.

I put it all together and we test if Polly can get it off the ground. She’s grown a little bigger since the last time I’ve seen her, so she has no problem with the payload.

“That’s all, then. We just have to wait for the monsters to make their move.”

----------------------------------------

Turns out, we don’t have to wait for long. The monsters have been spreading out for a while now, forming their numbers into multiple prongs. Our snipers have been keeping track of their movements, even if disseminating that information to all the defenders is slow without electronics.

“Alright, get ready to roll!” I yell.

“Really?” Jessica says.

The others laugh, but it’s strained. The kind of laughter to take the edge off before the shit hits the fan. We get down onto the street, where some of Jessica’s pets have been waiting for us. They’ll be our trusty steeds. Polly is up ahead on the building, waiting for the signal to take the payload and fly off.

“Ready?” I ask after we all climb on.

I’m back on Luna and Emily is on Donut. Jessica also rides a cat, though it looks more like a tiger. His name is Cookie. Karen is back on the two-headed pitbull, which I find is named Princess, while Clarissa and Derek have some kind of ferrets named Aglet and Long Bastard.

I shoot Jessica an incredulous look.

“What?” She asks.

“Did you name the pets?”

“Yeah?”

“I get Aglet, but Long Bastard? Really?”

“He’s long and he’s a bastard,” she says defensively. “He kept biting my fingers when I fed him.”

Carter rides the fire breathing bearded dragon, who I find out is named Destroyer. Damien clearly has a flair for the dramatic, though I'm surprised he agreed to lend us his main pet. I'll have to thank him later, and maybe try to pull him on the team.

Little Willy is the only one riding with someone else, which I can tell is pissing him the fuck off.

That someone else is me.

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Derek says.

The others nod, so we get moving. As the monsters approach the safe zone for their final attack, we jump over the barricade and make a mad dash across the no man's land. Polly grabs the payload and flies ahead of us, furiously beating her wings.

The first part of the plan is simple, and I expect it to go without a hitch. The monsters formed eight smaller groups, charging in from different directions to overwhelm our defenses with staggered attacks.

That's bad, but we expected it.

The skunk itself stays back. That's where our team comes in — or, well, goes out. We run between the monster groups, booking it towards their backlines to take out the boss and end the wave.

Karen takes point, casting buffs on us and debuffs on some of the monsters that peel away from their formations to chase us. Her mana sets the air around her ablaze with colors, washing over the rest of us as we follow right behind her.

The buffs she casts are the ones I've already seen: The Matriarch's Truce and Flock of Martyrs. Both are insanely useful, especially the latter. According to our earlier conversation, Flock of Martyrs started out with a 1% buff for 1 minute, but she put two more points into it to make it even better.

Jessica is right behind Karen, and although she's unable to buff us, she can buff the pets. Her aura isn't as strong or colorful as Karen's, but she makes the pets glow as they speed up.

Their combined efforts keep most of the monsters away. The few that aren’t scared into retreating are quickly shredded by either the pets, Emily, or Clarissa.

Me and Willy are behind the two, ready to take the lead after we pass the monster formations. Derek and Carter are behind us, while Emily and Clarissa bring up the rear. The two are fanned out to either side, which gives them better lines of sight around us in case they need to snipe monsters.

“Now! Switch!” I yell as soon as we make it past the monsters.

Karen and Jessica split up, making room for me to take the lead. Derek speeds up to get behind me while the two women slow down and settle into the flanks of the group.

Polly is still ahead of us, quickly gaining both ground and altitude.

“Willy, you're up!”

“Don't call me that!” The man complains.

He leans to the side and takes aim. As an Enforcer, he has a few skills that allow him to easily detonate the payload from afar. Bullseye to hit the target, Long Shot to give the bullet more distance, and Explosive Rounds to both pierce the pound bombs and to set them off.

The payload itself isn't anything too complicated, just the explosives wrapped in a few pillow cases that are stuffed with nails. Similar to the ones Emily and I used on the Marrower, just with a higher yield.

Polly gets some five hundred feet in front of us, right above the skunk. The wave boss stayed behind for this assault, but it was smart. It held about 50 monsters back, surrounding itself with a small security force of sorts.

“Jessica! Drop it!” I yell.

She sends the order to Polly, and the bird drops the payload right above the skunk. The improvised bomb drops from the sky like a stone as Polly tries to fly away as fast as she can.

Little Willy, hand outstretched, follows the payload with the barrel of his pistol. He waits until it is a mere thirty feet above the heads of the monsters, and he shoots three bullets in quick succession. The pistol barks right next to my ear.

I don’t expect the explosion to kill any of the monsters, not really. The skunk already survived multiple attempts, and the ones it kept around it are likely the highest level monsters it has. But that’s okay, I’m not hoping to kill. Just to maim and confuse.

The bullets hit, and a heartbeat later, the payload detonates. It’s a glorious sight, a fireball the size of a house rising through the treetops. Another heartbeat and the shockwave hits us, rattling teeth and pushing back hair.

Jessica pumps her fists in the air. “That’s what I’m talking about, baby!”