Chapter 13

A Bitchin' BOOM!

Everyone was stunned. Even the lackeys. Maybe especially them. They had expected an easy three kills and to walk away with an armory. But now a little girl with multicolored clothes and pigtails and viciously cut off their leaders head? It was a lot to process.

And it wasn't a picnic for me either cause she had some kind of unnatural obsession with me, still making direct and creepy eye contact.

The leader's body finally lost its footing and fell forward. The girl took one step to her left, avoiding being crushed by the chopped down giant. The blood spray continued but now even more aimed in my direction. A pool of blood was forming between the body and where Stephen and I crouched.

The girl finally broke eye contact to rummage around in the dead man's pockets. It was like she wanted to keep topping her levels of madness and disregard for humanity.

But at least she wasn't looking at me anymore.

The man closest to us was the first one to regain his senses.

"Hey! Bitch! Get the fuck away from him!" He fired off three shots.

Even with her back turned she dodged two of them. The third nicked her shoulder. But she whirled around, all smiles, a thick white stick in her hand.

The man started to fire more but she pressed a button on the stick and held it up to him, shaking it back and forth. "Uh uh! No more of that!"

All the men jolted back, even Stephen tensed up.

"What's wrong?" I asked, not bothering to whisper anymore.

"That's a grenade."

I stared at the stick. "It is?"

"Yeah, a more modern one. Once she takes her finger off that button it will blow in three seconds."

"The two over there understood this game," she gestured to us. "But hopefully now you all do too. *I* hold all the cards. You'll do as I say, or I'll take us all out. Do you doubt I won't?"

No one argued.

She giggled. "Good. Now, everyone put down your weapons and throw them to me, make a little pile, right where this guy's head used to be."

She directed us with her foot, like we all weren't highly aware of the neck still spewing blood everywhere. But everyone did as she asked.

She held the grenade high above her head where everyone could see it, and she bent down to pick up each weapon, adding them all to her inventory, one by one.

"You masked losers, I want your ammo too."

They threw all sorts of rounds to her, which she pocketed the same as the weapons.

"Thank you, boys. You can go. Maybe you can still salvage this round. But if you come across me again... good luck." She cocked her head to the side and smiled real big, blood dripping down her mouth and over her teeth.

The masked men wasted no time and ran away, weaponless, ammoless, leaderless, and in one of their cases two fingers less.

She watched them run for a bit and then set her sights back on us. "Don't feel too jealous. Once I'm done with you two I'll hunt them down."

If she was even half as persistent with killing them as she was with me, I had no doubt she would have their heads before the end of the match.

She put up a few more pieces of ammo and then walked toward me, making sure to slam her foot in the blood puddle, splashing me with it. She jumped the last few steps and drenched me in the blood. I closed my eyes and gagged, much to the glee of the psychopath.

The girl bent slightly. She didn’t need to squat to get to eye level with me.

"And now our little chase comes to an end."

A wild breeze kicked up as if to spite me, making me even colder in my new coat of blood and knocking my hair in my eyes. Maybe it was trying to help me, actually. Hiding me from the crazed girl's death glare.

"I heard that you didn't know what this is." She held up the grenade. "So I'm going to explain another function it has. All I gotta do is press this little tiny button here..." She pointed to the bottom of it. "And then it becomes a sticky grenade!"

She pressed it and it looked like a cracked glow stick, a blue energy leaked out into the grenade until it was all a pulsing blue.

"And what do you think I'm going to stick it to?"

She flashed that bloody wide grin again and cocked her head to the side, her pigtails blowing around like crazy.

She lifted the grenade above her head. "Time to die, girly!!"

Her arm came down, aimed for my forehead. As I flinched away, I caught sight of the weirdest

thing: her left pigtail had blown into the chest I opened. Which gave me a desperate idea.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I rolled to the left, going under her hand as it landed harmlessly onto the ground. It flashed, confirming that it had stuck. Before she could do anything other than glare, I kicked the lock on the chest. It slammed shut, catching the girl's pigtails inside.

"The hell did you—?"

As I brought myself back I sideswiped her hand, knocking her finger off the grenades button. A high pitched noise went off, increasing in intensity.

The girl screamed and grabbed for me but I managed to flip backwards and onto my feet, not gracefully but enough to get away and up. I grabbed Stephen's hand and yanked him up into a run.

"YOU WHORE!!" She pulled at her hair, trying to get free. The grenade's' horrible noise grew. "YOU FUCKING CU—"

I ran a little farther and then jumped forward as far as I could, Stephen mimicking me.

The explosion went off, sending us sprawling and heating up our backs. It probably did damage but we were a long ways off from having the mental stability to check such things. We fell on our faces, I banged up my knee a bit, but neither of us cared. We were back up and running almost as soon as we fell.

We did not once look back at the wreckage as we ran for the hills.

#

I don't know how long we ran. It felt like a lot but still not enough at the same time. The girl’s eyes were burned into my skull. We narrowly avoided checking out early and I couldn't shake the feeling that we were on borrowed time. Like our victory wasn't fully deserved.

"Darcy," Stephen said, panting. "I gotta stop."

I was also exhausted so I nodded. There was a cave up in a nook ahead. The perfect place to rest and figure out our next move. I pointed it out and we made our way over.

I looked for signs that other Users were there, or had been, but didn't notice anything. We made it inside safely and immediately collapsed against opposite walls of the cave.

"I don't think I've ever ran that much." Stephen panted.

"I thought that yesterday. I really hope this doesn't become a thing with us," I said.

"It's kind of a good thing. Raises our stamina, probably gonna need that for the tournament."

"What won't we need for it?"

"My sitting down abilities."

I burst out laughing and luckily so did Stephen so I didn't feel too bad.

"Maybe there will be a round where using our legs is banned."

He pointed at himself. "Then I'm your guy."

I laughed again. "After all this running I might start leveling up my sitting Stat to even things out. I'm beat."

He nodded his agreement.

Then a silence went through the cave. Outside, it started to rain. I found that funny, usually in these kinds of scenarios the heroes would get soaked before finding their hide away from the storm. We lucked out.

"We almost lost," Stephen said eventually. "You saved our hides, Darce."

I waved my hand, fending off his praise. "Beginner's luck, I'm sure. I was just winging it. Think I'll get experience for any of it?"

"I'm not sure, there’s gotta be some Stats you flexed to get through it."

"If Luck was a Stat, you better believe I either leveled it up or have a lot of it already," I said.

Luck was another thing un-measurable by the Interverse. And if it was, it probably would be a Stat forever in flux, having to measure all sorts of possibilities in every moment. Just thinking about all that math made my head spin.

"I hope you've got some left," Stephen said, watching the rain outside.

He was right. We may have survived but we made it out with zero weapons, equipment, or resources. We were screwed beyond belief if we didn't find something soon. I didn't know all the rules of this game, but I could assume that the longer the match went on the less weapons there were on the field.

"Where should we start looking for weapons?" I asked.

"Our only hope is probably this cave."

I raised my eyebrow. "The cave?" I looked deeper in, seeing nothing but darkness.

"Yep. They usually hide some pretty good loot in something like this."

"The luck continues then," I said with a grin.

"I guess it does, unfortunately for my sitting Stat." He groaned and got to his feet, a little wobbly.

I joined him and grabbed his arm to steady him a bit. "You sure you're okay? We can keep resting."

He waved his hand. "No, we've wasted too much time. The more time we spend unarmed the greater our chances are of checking out early. We need to get at least some combat in or this whole thing will have not been really worth the trouble."

"Right. So... what do we do about that?" I gestured to the overwhelming and limitless darkness ahead of us.

He put his finger on his temple and tapped, at first I thought he was saying we had to use our brain, but a light clicked on from the side of his head.

"Whoa. Another thing you forgot to tell me about?" I pressed my own temple and our light sources doubled. The darkness was vanquished about twenty or thirty feet ahead of us.

"Nothing was stopping you from reading the manual." Stephen set off first.

"Oh yeah, I had plenty of time to read a four hundred plus page tome."

We both dropped our conversation as we walked. I couldn't speak for Stephen but I was a little freaked out. Even with the lights, it almost made it worse, wherever we looked there would be weirdly shaped shadows making me think we were about to be attacked. We were probably safe from other players—unless there was another entrance to the cave—but I'm sure there could be wild creatures in here.

Actually... I wasn't sure.

"Stephen? Oh sorry." He jumped when I suddenly spoke. "I just wanted to know if there are NPCs in these matches?"

"Human ones, sometimes. But wildlife based ones almost always."

"Think there could be anything in here?" Please say no, please say no.

"I would not doubt it for a second."

Shit.

We continued on and I wished I hadn't said anything. My paranoia reached newfound levels, I was seeing bears and wolves in every shadow. One looked a lot like a goblin. I considered double checking if that was a possibility but decided that I was better off not knowing.

As we went deeper, the cave got thinner and thinner until we were walking almost shoulder to shoulder. Stephen graciously let me walk a little ahead and lead the way through the possible NPC filled death trap. He smiled sheepishly at me. I just kept walking, but stayed close to him in case I needed to throw him in front of me.

You know, I really thought that would be something I would do in a life or game over scenario. I'd never cared too much about people and didn't think too much of sacrificing someone for my own survival. Especially in a Respawn zone. But Stephen was different. I found myself protecting him at every turn. Some situations I even put his safety above mine first. That was unheard of for me.

I guess that was just friendship because he did the same for me. He held off that King Slime like a champ, even when it didn't seem like my plan would work. He trusted me. He risked his experience points which, okay, wasn't as big of a deal as his LIFE... but it still was a lot more than anyone else had put on the line for me.

I was about to tell him how much that meant to me when my head bonked into something.

"Ow, fuck." I rubbed my head.

The cave leveled down to a tunnel. I'd walked into the top of the much smaller entrance.

Stephen stuck his head in. "I hope you're not claustrophobic."

"I'm not." I thought about it. "I don't think, anyway. I guess I'll let you know in a second."

He laughed. "You want me to go first this time?"

"Wow, willingly giving up your chance to look at my butt?" I winked at him.

His cheeks became red beacons in the dark. "What, I—I didn't even think of that."

I play shoved him. "I'm just joking, man. You choose." I stuck out my butt a little.

He blushed even more. "I—I'm going first."

He disappeared into the tunnel at once. I followed after him and could still see the rosy glow from his cheeks, lighting our way.