I allowed the quake-wagon to roll to a stop, Ren’s off-roader sliding across the dry gravel beside me. The last dune, once driven over, had then revealed the destination to us. It was now late afternoon, nearly dusk. The city of Blightwatch stood before us in the distance, and it was… more impressive than I had expected. The picture truly didn’t do it justice.
The pyramid shape was roughly clear, although it was a lot more jumbled from this angle. It almost looked like stacks of large shipping containers, arranged as best as someone was able - if they had little care for the appearance of the end product. Eight stories tall at the peak, each floor of the giant construct was approximately twenty feet tall. Dark stone, dotted with lights.
“A city within a single building, a bit like a castle,” Roxy thought out loud.
[How much would stealth cloaking technology for our vehicles cost?]
I was all for going up against the odds, but I was usually most effective when turning up unexpectedly and flashing through with quick bursts of sudden violence. Signaling my approach from miles away just felt mentally exhausting, if not physically detrimental.
//Clara: Assuming you reach A-Rank, 3 or 4 year’s salary.
“Even if they can see us, they are unlikely to take us seriously enough to be a threat. At least until we start attacking.” Roxy raised an eyebrow and turned to me. “At least, if they were normal, that would be the case. If whatever is possessing them is especially aggressive, then we’ll be in for a shitty time.”
[Joy. If both the vehicles get totalled, then you’re carrying me home.]
“No romancing on the job, hun.” She shot me a wry grin before looking back toward the city. “I love you, but from this point, it’s business only. I know I can trust you to stick with that, and I expect you to keep the others in line. Now I’m getting back into this whole-ass, I will run a tight ship.”
[I’m your left hand. Whatever you ask.]
Her head turned to me, her expression neutral, but her eyes practically glowing with fiery energy. “Let’s burn the fucker to the ground.”
Before I could address that rather stark statement, Clara pinged through in my lens in the group chat.
//Clara: Comms check. Echo.
//Rockslide: Echo.
//Gunquake: Echo.
//Captain Snaps: Echo.
//Little Wren: Echo.
//PHG Belle: Echo.
//Clara: Comms confirmed. Maintain closed chatter from this point onward.
//Rockslide: We are going to approach the south east corner of the structure.
//Rockslide: Obscuring Breach procedure.
//Rockslide: Keep each other safe and focus on the mission.
Everyone signed off their approval. It warmed my internals to see it all in action. A tighter performance than I’d ever seen from them. I was glad we had designed this scenario buster yesterday, even if we had no use for it at the time. There was still plenty of risk to it, but at least we weren’t going to be running up to the large walls like headless chickens.
Roxy gave me a nod, and I hit the accelerator. We all had our roles planned out, both for our entrance and beyond. The super had been filtering commands to the others during our drive over, but gave me fewer notes. She knew the experience I had, and we had fought together a few times before. I wasn’t quite the sidekick she had envisioned, but with this kind of mission, I was in my element.
We knew we weren’t just being tested on our ability to kill, though. Her leadership, Clara’s assistance, and how the team worked together were all under the microscope. Mostly because the League wanted to eat their cake yet still have it after. We had to be marketable as well. A verifiable super team under their purview, even if they sent us off under the cover of night to do the unthinkable. A dangerous game, which was my favorite kind.
As we rocketed toward the isolated civilization, I wondered how many places like this existed out in the wastes. Maybe a handful in the local city cluster, hundreds in the continent? The World Government seemed either too busy to deal with them, or it wasn’t worth their effort. Of course, the League of Heroes also believed the Gov was cultivating bad groups around Goldarch to pose a constant threat—which was a reasonable guess, as that is almost what they did with villains in the city.
The wagon shook as we bounced over rough lumps in the cracked ground. Roxy held onto the furnishings, her jaw clenched. My mood cooled, and I tried to get in the right mindset for what I was about to commit. Mass murder. The minutes ticked by, and I found my grip tightening on the steering wheel. Fun and games were over.
A plume of sand burst up as something fired at us from their battlements. Missed by twenty feet, but it caused Roxy to swear loudly.
[Your command?]
“We need to get closer first. Slam it.”
I sped up as she told the second vehicle to fall behind us to use the quake-wagon as cover. A few shaky seconds later and an odd sheen covered the windscreen. Belle had put a protective shield over my vehicle. Now I felt slightly more comfortable about not getting my brains blow out. Not that the attackers had particularly good aim.
A second puff of shredded ground burst into the air thirty feet in front of us as a second bullet whizzed past and way beyond our convoy. If only Ren used a sniper rifle rather than a bow, we could return fire. I made the mental note to ask Clara how much it would cost to get a satellite armed with an orbital cannon.
I swerved around a grouping of rocks and bumped my way onto a smoothed road. Still rock and dirt, but something Blightwatch used regularly.
//Clara: Estimated disembarking time, 30 seconds.
A bullet struck the windscreen, cracking the glass. The shield shimmered and prevented it from piercing through.
Roxy glared at the bullet hanging a foot away from her face. “Motherfucker, I’ll stick that rifle up their ass.”
[I am ready for disembarking.]
“Roger that.” She calmed and shook her head. “Alright, it’s go time, Dubs. Swing a right to that section of wall, near the corner.”
With a nod, I did ask she asked, bumping back off of the road and onto the rougher ground once more. The quake-wagon growled and shuddered as we plowed through thicker sand. It was built for this, however. It was part of our plan.
//Clara: 10 seconds.
Roxy took a deep breath and held onto the door handle, ready. After a couple of seconds, the wall ahead of us growing larger to fill our forward view, she nodded. “Now.”
I hit the handbrake and twisted to the side, pointing the side of the vehicle with Roxy in at the wall.
The flash of Roy whipped around ahead of us, a wave of sand filling the air in his wake. Once he had circled back around to the other vehicle in what was hardly two seconds, an arrow struck the space between the wagon and the wall amongst the powdered sand. A large swirl of angered wind spun through the heated air, drawing up more debris in a torrent to create a large obscuring wall between the city and us, something that put even my Triple Smoke to shame.
And Roxy was gone. I popped my door and stepped out, almost immediately joined by Belle. She gave me a grim smile as the roar of our strength super billowed out from the cloud. Ren was standing atop her vehicle, hand out and controlling the wind. The Captain had his hand just over his eyes, trying to pick out the shape of Roxy as the sound of masonry collapsing gave us the signal we needed.
Ren quit her tornado and drew a magical arrow to her bow, one eye closed to focus on any figures. I set off into a jog, Belle following me behind. Roy sped past us to assist the strength super.
As impressive as the structure had been, no man-made building could stand up to Roxy. Rather than assault the gates, we had made our own entrance. A landing zone to start our fight proper. Segmenting the combat to room-by-room basis put things in our advantage. That was the intention, anyway.
The scouting drone unclipped from my backpack and caught itself in the air, almost immediately zipping out high above us.
//Clara: Deploy successful. Running recon.
She spun the quicker technology up and around the falling plume of sand, and a few seconds later the elf fired her bow—the bright white of her arrow piercing the temporary gloom. I assumed Clara gave her the target’s positional information. After earning her first kill, she dropped from her vehicle and ran to catch us slower ones up. She was the softest target out of us, which was sometimes at odds with her need to be at a distance from the combat.
We plunged ourselves through the rain of debris and out to the other side, clearly seeing the hole torn through the brickwork. Flickers of electricity bloomed on one side of the room while Roxy tore a figure literally in half. The League were playing with fire here. There was a reason the Gov was keen to kill me off.
I slid to the ground and covered the two women as they leaped over the low remnants of shattered stone. Whoever was home didn’t have the confidence to drop down from the high battlements behind us, but I couldn’t leave that as an open possibility. When I couldn’t shadow Roxy, the Captain filled that position.
Belle held up her book, and the dome filled the chamber, giving us some breathing room.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
It looked like the room had five occupants originally. One had been crushed by the falling wall. Roxy had pulped three while Roy had stopped the runner from leaving the room. They appeared to be similar to orcs, but something about them was different. A darker, reddish skin rather than the usual green hues. Their eyes were a luminous pink, still glowing and staring off at the walls even in death. I wasn’t sure whether the swirling tattoos were branded on their skin before or after the entity had taken over.
The room itself almost held up to the shipping container-esque appearance. It was oddly shaped, at twenty feet tall and double that long. Shelving and beds were affixed to the walls halfway up, ladders dotting the place. The miscellaneous objects amongst the debris told me this was probably just a simple home. Well, simple was an awkward phrase for it—as I could see now that the walls also bore similar markings as the tattoos.
And they pulsated with a similar pink hue as the eyes of these bodies.
The drone hovered down beside me, almost unnoticed with the quieter motors.
//Clara: North has an open area where targets are gathering.
//Clara: West is more residential housing.
Roxy clucked her tongue and turned to us. She hadn’t seen fit to use her lava yet, which was understandable—exhaustion early on would neuter a great deal of her power.
“We’re heading to the center, as discussed. I want to head North and clear some space first, rather than beeline, to create a path we can fall back to if required.”
We nodded our acceptance of her plan. There was no arguing, really. She strode over to the doorway as we got into position. Ren watched our backs, bow at the ready while I settled in to shadow Roxy. It was a shame there wasn’t the time to gauge the elf’s reaction to getting her first kill. She was rather pragmatic and business-like in her personal life, so maybe it would be the same for this.
As Roxy paused at the doorway, I unclipped a grenade from my vest and handed it to Roy. Smoke shell loaded into my chamber. Despite our gathered strengths, we had agreed that just mindlessly tearing through everything might work, but only for so long. The shared experiences of the Captain and myself gave us plenty of ideas for how to progress through scenarios like this while decreasing the risk we put each other through.
Belle cast a shield over Roy, and the strength super kicked open the door into the small courtyard. My Smoke shot hit the ground about a dozen feet away from Roxy, blooming gray cloud around the open doorway. The Captain zipped off.
Roxy went out as I loaded a new shell in. Roy was back before a new one even made it out of my magazine, blinking his eyes to remove the lingering effect of the Flash grenade. There was a loud crash and the sound of rifle fire, before mostly silence. I was now able to pick up the sound of shouting in the muffled background.
//Clara: Behind.
I spun in place, Overcharge and Reflex burning through my system, V-Force drive shaking from the sudden power surge.
Three figures had come over from the front gate, each armed with the same rifle that I had heard from the courtyard. They looked flintlock in design, single-shot and roughly made—but powered by yellow crystals rather than the expected gunpowder.
Their glowing eyes against the looming dusk made picking them out as targets rather easy. We had even practiced target acquisition and division of force in our training. I’d allow no rookie errors on Roxy’s watch.
I blew a steel sphere through the upper torso of the one on the right, just below his throat. Ren’s arrow slammed through the eye of the one on the left. Before the middle one had a chance to raise their rifle up to get a bead on us, Roy was in front of them. A flurry of blows acted like a powerful taser, shaking the body of the orc before they dropped from the crackling blue arcs, their head smoking.
We turned and moved to catch Roxy up; the Captain holding back just to check there weren’t more following us. Out from the cloud of smoke, the super was there, covered in blood. Eyes focused and burning with intense energy. A couple of red lines on her arms where she had been shot, but it had barely broken her skin. Belle still hit her with some minor regeneration to keep her topped up.
She had thrown a stone bench at a group trying to use another one as cover. Then punched through another three who hadn’t gotten the hint. Blood sprayed up the wall from where they had burst. In addition to the crimson splashed about her, she looked anything but a hero at present.
//Clara: There are several groups gathering back at the gate, intending to send waves out behind us.
“Fuck’s sake,” Roxy said with a sigh. “We can’t afford to split attention or forces.”
[We could bring one of the rooms down to block the route, although that will pin us in.]
“I can always make a new exit,” she said with a nod.
So we just had to hope nothing happened to her. Out of all of us, she was the most likely to be fine—but she would also take the brunt of a lot of the problems coming our way. High risk due to attrition. They’d have to get through me first before anything bad happened to her. I wouldn’t survive letting Clara down.
“Ready to breach that doorway,” she said and pointed to the next northern doorway. While we went and prepared, she stepped over to the room we had just left. With a short grunt, she leaped up into the air through the thick rock, before landing back on it, cracking the roof in half lengthwise. A wave of powdered stone washed over us as the house collapsed, and she hopped back over to us.
The orcs would still be able to clamber over the debris, but it would slow them enough to make it less enticing than circling back through the internal routes—even if longer. I considered this for a moment, before holding my gun-arm out. Fuel sprayed from the barrel as my backpack emptied out some of the refilled juice. After the sneeze of the shotgun cleaning out, I pumped through and incendiary shot. Flames burst up and ran over the cluttered debris, giving the orcs a secondary reason not to attempt to sneak up on us.
Tazer loaded into my gun-arm as I walked over to the next exit and gave the speedster a nod. He burst through the door and slid across the room, dodging the first shot that cracked against the wall. Ren's arrow broke through the skull of the second, their shot offset into the ceiling. I stepped in and blasted the third occupant with my electrifying shot. Roy finished them off with a quick one-two before knocking them out with a spin kick. He hopped in place, limbering up as he exhaled.
“We still have the element of surprise on our side,” Roxy said, moving into the room behind me. “Once they organize, we’ll have to be more cautious.”
[This looks like ragtag militia rather than an organized force so far. Both houses have signs of the owners being workers. Mining and craft equipment.]
Belle pulled the door closed as she came in last. “It’s likely there is a tiered system here. The orcs are probably the working class, on the outskirts of the city. We may come across better equipped and trained groups further in.”
“Sounds likely,” Roxy agreed. “The targets are expected to be at super level, so keep those eyes peeled. Exterminate with extreme prejudice.”
In her current state, that phrase gave me the chills. I was once again reminded how easily Roxy could switch to being a villain. She just lacked the motivation. Or rather, she had been laying dormant in more ways than one. Unfortunately, I loved it. The act fit something comfortable and familiar. Probably my old squad leader was built around strength and being a hardass. That just made the rest of this play out a little smoother.
[Ready to move on.]
Clara was outside somewhere, watching the local area. While some of the blocky buildings were directly adjacent to each other, some opened up into open spaces. Courtyards or what passed as gardens out here in the wastes. Keeping an eye on those was more important than having the drone stuck in an enclosed space we already had control over. It was more than control. The orcs didn’t have an answer to Roy’s speed, let alone Roxy’s strength.
We switched to our secondary formation, which had those two up front, with the elf and I at the back. While it gave me less to do, there was no point putting myself in harm's way, either. Until we met a different degree of opponent, this was the best strategy.
After all, today wasn’t about my own ego trip for a change. I didn’t have to drag my beaten body over the finish line by a hair’s breadth just to earn some kind of penance for the sins of my life. This was about the whole. A workable team that the League could utilize. I could take a backseat for a few minutes to show that I could play well with others.
//Clara: Rooftop targets West in the next yard. Estimated 40ft distance.
“Frag,” Roxy requested, and I responded immediately, tossing her one of my new toys. “Smoke door.”
Her foot launched the wooden blockade into shards, and my shot obscured her entrance. She stepped through, and I watched her outline lean back before pitching the explosive. The detonation came a split second later as she launched it with such force that it exploded immediately after hitting the group waiting for us with rifles. I turned back to watch our backs while Roy zipped through the smoke to mop up.
I glanced over at Ren. She looked tense, sweat running down the side of her face as she glared at the door with me.
[You’re doing well. You’ll shine better when we get into more open areas.]
The elf shot me a humorless grin before focusing on any potential targets again. “Thanks. This is just a lot more intense than expected, and I feel somewhat out of place compared to the rest of you.”
[That’s just in your head, believe me. Let’s move on.]
With a nod, she turned and moved over to the doorway while I covered her. I could imagine why she felt the way she did. Her business kept her rusty, and she hadn’t had to work too hard as a hero. Despite this, I knew she was powerful and had more strength and ability than she had realized, even after training. She just needed to see this as the new normal.
[Holding up, Belle?]
The defensive hero raised an eyebrow and gave me a brief nod. “Nothing too strenuous so far, His guidance willing. A shield that isn’t damaged doesn’t take much of my mana, and these heathens are terrible shots.”
I gave her a nod in return, slightly bemused some of her pious vernacular had come back. Not as much as usual, but she was halfway between the two personalities. I had worried that my aura of preventing access to Him would affect her spell casting, but she assured me that it would take a lot of exposure for that to happen—and she couldn’t stand me for that long.
Out of all of us, I was the only one allowed to engage in idle chatter. Not because Roxy was playing favourite, but because it was part of my role. Being in charge of morale and unit cohesion had been delegated to me almost immediately. They were all fine with it, not just because I had become the de facto second in command, but I had been the one to push the broken parts together. It only made sense to be the glue to hold us whole.
As we emerged from the fog, we found Roxy stretching out her back in front of a collapsed building. Roy was crouched down beside one of the corpses, observing their odd appearance.
[Thoughts, Captain?]
He pulled a face and turned to me. “Nothing good, ‘Quake. These are Rot Orcs, but they have been mutated past their usual unique ancestry. The weaponry is odd as well. More magic than technology.”
“Have a look, Belle,” Roxy requested. “And then we’re moving on. Four more rooms north before we’ll start toward the center.”
We had been moving up the east wall of the pyramid interior. I had been the one to convince her to not go straight for the prize from the outset. A risk, but she could see the benefit of clearing a space behind us. Being surrounded could be dire, even against these weaker opponents. We had discussed the merits and risks of splitting up, but both agreed that we would all stick together unless something strange came up.
There was enough power to make two or even three effective groups. I didn’t think of us as individuals, however. We were one whole unit. By condensing our strengths into a singular fighting group, we would become unbreakable. Any efficiency we would lose in lack of spacial control wouldn’t matter if success was inevitable, and we’d all return to our homes in one piece.
I had enough blood on my hands. I didn’t need theirs as well.
Belle used Detect Magic on one of the odd rifles. Her face contorted, and she eventually shook her head. “His blessing doesn’t allow me to pick out many details. These crystals are infused with magic, and produce high velocity projectiles similar to a bullet.”
“Any corrupting effects? Poison or any other bullshit?” Roxy wiped the blood from her hands off on her thighs.
“None that I can tell.”
“Perfect. Recon?”
//Clara: West is now blocked, targets diverted.
//Clara: North is two residential, then a larger open space.
//Clara: Targets convening. Will keep you updated on the number.
//Clara: Currently 12. Cannon-like weaponry being moved in place.
Roxy grinned and looked at the rest of us. “Looks like they’re getting a welcome party ready for us. Who’s in the mood for fireworks?”