Chapter 48

Chasing Skulls

As soon as I spawned into my bed, I immediately went to message Stephen. It came so naturally to me and I did it so fast my brain didn't even catch up in time.

[ Stephen, Sam was stolen. I couldn't save him. ]

But as soon as it was too late to delete it, my brain beat me to a pulp. 'Why did you do that?? We can't talk to him anymore! You're gonna look so fucking weak going to him with this—'

Amazingly, there was a response. No written reply, but a request to teleport to his current location which also was completely unexpected. He was in Kenzo's office. In all of my months training there, I'd never once ran into Stephen.

I accepted the request instantly, surprising myself. I expected to hesitate, to doubt that I could face Stephen, but in the moment I couldn't think of anywhere else I would rather be.

I materialized onto the couch, Stephen sitting beside me. I'd tried to avoid all news of his rising star so his current form came as quite a shock. Gone was the nerdy loser I knew, replaced with a Shiny Nerd, as I could only think to call it. He positively glistened, all his details outlined in some sort of makeup or energy. It made him look hyper real, like anyone without that glow was dimmer, lesser. His red hair was even brighter, pulled back on his head into spikes.

The look he gave me was very Stephen though. Unsure, worried, and a hint of fear. And I didn't think it was fear for Sam, but fear of what I was going to say.

Not even fully teleported in, I let him have it. "What the fuck is up with that Naruto ass looking hair?"

He went a little pale and touched his tips. "I-I like it. Nothing is wrong with my hair. It's cool."

"It's ridiculous."

Stephen started to protest more but Kenzo spoke over him. "I'm glad to see you both speaking again but, first, Darcy—what happened? Are you alright? Who is this Sam person?"

Oh man, he didn't even know that much. I put a pin in our argument and quickly caught Kenzo up on who Sam was and how we met him. And then I told them the upsetting story of how I got the absolute shit beat out of me.

"That masked man is really that strong?" Stephen's mouth was agape.

"Yeah. Cause of the settings of the location we were in I couldn't see his overall combat level but I know it was hella higher than mine. None of the attacks that hit him directly did a damn thing."

"You're lucky it didn't end up worse," Stephen said. "He is obviously some powerful lunatic, he could have captured you too or something."

"I wish he did, at least then I would know where he took Sam. I gotta figure out who that fucker is."

Stephen raised an eyebrow. "What? You're going looking for him?"

I looked at him like he was dumb. "Uh, yeah, he took Sam!"

"I know his Quest seemed pretty cool, and he does cook really good pizza... but he's just a—"

"Don't you fucking say it."

"...an NPC."

He said it. I slammed my finger into his chest, pushing him back to the left arm of the couch. "The Stephen I knew would never say something like that. What happened to that guy who cared about even a server NPC? How the hell did you change SO much!?"

He sat forward, pressing back against my finger. "Hey, I'm just saying—he isn't a person. If you brought this to the Admin's attention no one would bat an eye. You can't really kidnap an NPC. If he was able to be taken, he wasn't ever really yours to begin with."

Angry tears built in my eyes and I was really fucking serious about showing him that fury, I did not hold back.

"Sam is my friend. He is more than an NPC, more than just some code and graphics. He has made me food every day since I met him, he has stuck by me. Something that you couldn't even fucking do. You got one little moment of importance and completely fucked off, something Sam would NEVER do. So, yeah, I'm going to go looking for him, you piece of shit!"

I bolted from the couch and went in my menu, hitting the option to leave. But nothing happened.

[ Permission denied! The session is not over yet. ]

"What the fuck teacher!?" I rounded on him. "I did not agree to this being a session!"

Stephen stood up too but he didn't match my energy. He projected his voice but he wasn't yelling and unhinged like I was. "It's my session. I... was getting help with something."

I rolled my eyes. "What problems could the great and mighty Stephen possibly have?"

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He mumbled something under his breath.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said where I could finally hear him. "It's nothing."

"You're so right. No problems for the Struggler King. I can't believe I came to you, I'm so stupid."

My fire was gone but the tears kept coming. I could no longer explain them away as fueled by anger.

"Darcy, wait, that's not what I—"

I glared at him, tears streaming down my face. "Goodbye, Stephen."

He reached for me, about to say something else but I'd heard enough. I teleported back to my room, where I wiped my tears and hid under the covers.

Sam was gone. And my one ally had abandoned me. But that's fine.

I would find him all on my own.

#

I didn't stay under the covers long. Once the tears were dried I bolted out of bed and ran to the living room. I turned on all the lights and activated an Item Seeking mode that highlighted things that could be interacted with. It was some very Batman kind of tech and would help me find any clues that may have been left behind. At the start of my search I was positive that at some point during the fight something would have been knocked off the kidnapper.

I used my powers to pick up the table and couch and everything else that was thrown around in the attack. I scanned around them all, gave them a shake, and looked all around the living room.

Fucking nothing.

I put the living room back into place and plopped down onto the couch, defeated. With the furniture it its rightful spots again it looked like nothing had even happened. The home was just a lot quieter than normal and no amazing smells wafted through the halls.

A PLOP! came from behind me. I whirled around to see Percy jumping out of the tank, trying to get my attention.

I walked over to him, my head down. "I'm sorry, Percy. I couldn't save him."

He bumped up against the glass and I put my hand up. He gave me comfort just as effortlessly as a more traditional pet.

"Do you have any ideas? How do I find him?"

Percy swam away. At first I thought I'd spooked him or something but he didn't hide. Instead, he went in and out of the big decor skull's eyes. I watched him, in and out, in and out... wait!

"Percy, you're a genius!!" I held my hand up again and he flew into it, wiggling all around, glad that I finally understood what he was saying.

The skull masks. I doubted that was just for show, it could be a link back to their group. If I knew who they were I would be one step closer to finding where they were.

There was a function of the Interverse where the things you saw for the past 24 hours recorded and stored, but were deleted at the start of the next day. Was that kind of creepy? Oh yes. But now I was glad for that feature. I brought up the feed and unfortunately had to be reminded of the fight with Stephen, and the fight with the lumberjack—I'd really gotten my ass handed to me tonight.

But I eventually got a good front on shot of the mask. I took a screenshot of it and put it into an Interverse image search, where it would scour posts for anything remotely similar to the original image.

I walked over to the couch and collapsed onto it. The search was taking longer than usual, but I didn't often use the image search honestly so maybe it was normal. My leg bounced around anxiously, rocking the whole couch.

But, finally, it completed, giving me THOUSANDS of hits. I was not expecting that. I flipped through the results.

[ A New Interverse Crime Wave ]

That one had a picture of the masks. I clicked on it.

[ Reports are coming in all over the Interverse of thefts and attacks. The thread connecting them all together is that every culpret was seen dawning a blue skull mask. ]

Blue... but not red? Did that mean the lumberjack was the leader of all these lunatics? I mean, he was strong, sure, but THAT strong? And even wearing a level suppressor I think he would have been stronger in the battle royale if he is the leader of a whole outfit of masked evil doers.

But he was definitely more than a lackey, that was for sure.

I narrowed the search to just the red masks. I couldn't find anything except some dumb streamer's who wore red masks, none of them skull like.

Weird. Why was he wearing it that first day in the battle royale, then? Was that the first time he chose to wear it?

Wait. I brought up video from the last day of our match with the psycho girl. I searched through a bunch of footage and angles until I found someone who got a good look at the lumberjack and his men. Blue mask, blue mask, ugh, they were all blue.

Why had no one seen the leader? I buckled down and REALLY searched, pouring over the videos, one at a time. That's when I saw it: they did see the leader. But every single frame showed him wearing a blue mask.

What the hell did that mean? I went back to my own recording of our fight in the alley. It was as red as could be. So odd.

But, okay, there was no info on red skull masks. Let's find out all there was to know on the blue ones.

That first article was basically the catch all. Continuing on from that all the individual cases popped up. These blue masks really were a menace, there were countless news reports of sightings of them—and not a single one of them were in the news for anything good. Like the first article said, thefts and attacks. But the sheer number of incidents was insane.

I searched by oldest, looking for the very first one.

[ A Man Wearing a Blue Skull Mask Steals Candy From Kid ]

What the actual fuck. Their beginning was the lowest lamest crime that exists. Nothing about these people made sense, why would they want candy theft to be their very first crime? But I now knew they had been around for about a year.

A whole year of thefts and attacks. I tried to find a pattern but there didn't seem to be any. And very few of the articles about theft said what they actually took. But there was one interesting detail:

[ ...the thieves gained entry by an outdated security system... ]

Nearly every theft article said that. I grimaced and brought up my apartment's security system knowing full well what I would find…

[ ALERT! SECURITY UPDATES NEEDED!! ]

You have to understand, my mom handled all that stuff when she was alive. After she died... I dunno, it felt like something I couldn't touch. Like if I did it would be admitting she was gone. Stupid, I know.

So fucking stupid, honestly. The only tiny other excuse I had for it was that updates cost money. But if I had kept up with them it wouldn't have been a big deal at all but after a year of dodging them, I was looking at a ten thousand Versecoins fine. I wouldn't have been able to pay that comfortably not too long ago but with all the earnings I'd collected since the tournament hype started it was no problem.

I paid the fee, and didn't even pause on the update button, clicking it right away. Aren't you proud of me?

...no, you're probably still thinking how much of an idiot I am. Because of my fear of letting my mom go, I'd put off something that would have prevented Sam from being stolen. I'd felt bad about it before but now? It was like I'd just handed him over myself on a silver platter.

But as tempting as it was to beat myself up and roll around in despair, if I did that there was no hope of getting Sam back. So I pushed all that down and continued my search.

The articles hadn't been super helpful so I went on Interverse forums, searching for mentions of the Blue Masks. There was a lot, but it was basically the same shit as the articles, just from the point of view of the actual victims or people close to them. Nothing worthwhile.

But, hidden amongst all the retreads was one interesting post…

[ Those Blue Mask fuckers—think they are connected to the User Killers? ]