Chapter 24

Darcy's Anatomy

“We just have to make a friend. Easy.” I didn’t believe a word I said.

“For two introverts? Im–” The countdown reached its final point and we were whisked away to the battlefield. Our booth gave way to a rocky clearing. “--possible.”

We both spilled out onto the ground.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that first part.” I said as I pushed myself up onto my feet. “‘Possible.’ Yep.”

But the scene before us looked like anything but. The monster had spawned nearby and she was already in a rage, destroying everything in sight. People ran around, screaming, shooting, and dying.

A ways off, the monster girl lifted a giant rock and chucked it to the right into a group of Users approaching her. They broke ranks and tried to get out of the way but not in nearly enough time. The boulder hit and exploded, crushing the people underneath it and dealing chaos to anyone else nearby. One person had a shard impale him, right in the head. Less extreme cases had nasty cuts all over their bodies and lived to run away. In the midst of the corpses was a guy holding up a bleeding stump arm.

“There, we can help him!” I said, leaping into action.

“What, how? Darcy, wait!”

But I didn’t stop to listen, I’d already cleared the distance between us and fell to my knees beside the screaming guy.

“Hey! I’m–”

“Get the fuck away from me NOOB!”

My mouth fell open in shock. Here this man was, bleeding to death, and he had time to still be an asshole over my helmet. Unbelievable.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that," I said. “Now, hold still…”

I dug through my inventory and equipped a beam sword.

“No, no–get the fuck away from me with that!” The guy thrashed about even more, completely ignoring my hold still advice. What an asshole.

“Darcy what the hell are you doing? This is not how normal people make friends.” Stephen said as he kneeled down beside me.

“What about any of this is normal?” I gestured to the monster thrashing about thankfully a bit farther away. She hadn't caught sight of us. “Help me hold the dude’s intact arm down.”

He didn’t immediately jump into action but when I was swinging the sword around and it was clear that something else could get chopped off at any second, he bear hugged the guys arm and tackled it to the ground. Now free of distractions, I wrapped my legs around the stump arm, holding it still.

“This will only hurt for a second. I think.” I brandished the beam sword.

“No, please, just leave me–AHHH!” I sliced across the top of the wound, the laser energy of the blade cauterizing it, if a bit imperfectly.

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I released his arm, tapped Stephen on the shoulder and he did the same. I sheathed the blade and held out my hand.

“There you go! So, like I was saying, I’m Darcy and this is–”

The guy batted my hand aside and jumped to his feet, sobbing all over his freshly cauterized stump. “You’re fucking crazy!”

He ran away before I could say anything. I turned to Stephen. “Why was he so mad? We helped him.”

“I don’t think he wanted help, Darce. It’s kind of weird to do that to a stranger.”

“Doctors did it!”

“We are long passed needing to be healed. It’s much easier–and less painful–to just have your HP deplete.” When I just stared at him blankly he made a realization. “Oh, you don’t know that about the combat side of the Interverse? The only reason someone would want to be ‘healed’ like you just did was in a survival scenario. One they were close to or had a chance of winning.” He gestured at everything. “This is not one of those moments.”

“So… in his mind, I just caused him unnecessary pain?”

“Exactly.”

Shit…

“Now, if this had been the very last day for the chance for us to win then, yeah, maybe he would have thanked you for that. But on the second day? Nah.”

“Maybe he will save the day. Maybe he is the most powerful dude in the Interverse.”

I watched him run. Imagining at any moment he would leap into the sky and fly up to the monster and deliver a huge uppercut to her big ugly cthulhu face. But, no, he just kept running.

Until the monster noticed him and crushed him between her toes, not even giving him a second thought, onto the next ant to crush.

“Okay, yeah, I fucked up. Let’s pretend that didn’t happen. Don’t tell the old man.”

“How do you expect me to keep something as hilarious as that under wraps?” Stephen said before bursting into laughter.

“Shut up. I didn’t see you coming up with any bright ideas. I mean, there’s,” I glanced at the player count, “like fourteen people left and dropping. Our pool of possible friends is about to run out.”

Stephen slowly stopped laughing, also looking at the dropping number of living players. “Like I said, impossible.”

Ugh, I hated that he was giving up so easily. There was still fourteen–okay ten… nine– people left, there was still hope. I just needed to talk to one of them.

Someone came toward us, running for their life. I set off toward them but it was pointless, a vine whipped by, ripping the person to pieces. Maybe Stephen was right, maybe two introverts couldn’t even make a single–

“HELP!” A girl screamed from a ways off.

My head twisted to the side, like a dog perking its ears at the sound of their owner returning home.

I pinpointed the sound, there was a downed tree and a small hand was thrashing about from under the trunk.

“Stephen! She needs our help! This is a socially acceptable rescue now, right?”

Stephen grinned. “Yeah, Darcy. Go for–”

I’d already taken off running, Stephen picking up the rear. People were screaming and dying all around but I had only eyes and ears for the girl under the tree.

I made it there in no time at all and again was on my knees beside a fallen User and (hopefully) a future friend.

“Hey! I’m Darcy and this is,” he appeared beside me, slamming his shoulder into the tree, “Stephen. We’re here to help!”

“Thank.. You.” The girl squeaked out. She seemed to have used most of her strength yelling for help and the tree was making it hard for her to breathe.

“We will have you out of there in a jiffy!” God, why did I use that word? That was a mom like word. I was only twenty-five, had the mom transformation already begun?

Not enough time to worry about that. I lodged my shoulder against the tree, matching how Stephen did, and pressed up with all I had. Which, honestly, wasn’t a lot. My strength stat was prety measily and I couldn’t imagine Stephen had much more than me.

But, to my surprise, the tree started to lift. And I know for a fact it wasn’t cause of me. I looked over my shoulder to see Stephen red in the face but actually truly making progress. He was full of surprises.

And so, I might have felt pretty worthless, but the tree slowly lifted from the girl’s chest. I wedged my shoulder harder underneath and held out my hand to her.

“I got you!” I said through strained teeth.

She smiled up at me and took my hand.

As soon as she did the smile vanished from her face. For a moment I thought my hand must have been disgustingly sweaty or something but it was worse than that.

I looked up, just in time to see the cthulhu girl’s foot come down, crushing us, the final three surviving Users.

Making friends was hard.