The toilet mimic gnashed its teeth at Hachi, who wanted to attack, but had yet to find a way to bite through the mimic’s hardened porcelain shell.
“Poor Hachi, he’s so dumb,” Bianca said. “But he wants to kill so bad. I know the feeling.”
“You say the weirdest things sometimes,” Hiro told the shield as he prepared to jump down to the street. He had to be careful not to spook the mimic, which he knew would disappear if he got too close.
With this in mind, he landed about half a block away and slowly crept toward his opponent, hoping not to draw attention from anything else, namely Spectators. Hiro hadn’t encountered any since leaving Valeria’s home, but he knew they were out there and he continued to see the destruction they had caused already with their explosive armaments.
“So what does Haterade do exactly?” Bianca asked.
“It aggros an enemy. Keep quiet, let me focus.”
“Sorry, Big Brother Hiro. I know I’m chatty.”
“It’s fine.”
“But I won’t be in this world much longer, so I might as well say what’s on my mind.”
Hachi kept barking, which turned out to be the distraction Hiro needed as he managed to get close enough to the mimic to peg it with the can of Haterade, which, like a soda can, exploded upon impact.
The toilet mimic shifted backward and then pressed forward, its long tongue flying out of its mouth and striking Hachi. This sent the demon dog straight into an abandoned kebab stand as the mimic lunged for Hiro.
“You got that thing pissed!” Bianca said. “Need me?”
“Not yet!” Hiro told her. He cast {Kiss or Slap}, failed, and {Thoughts and Prayers}, which never seemed to do anything.
Just have to time this right… He stepped back, pill bottle in hand. The mimic’s toilet bowl mouth opened, Hiro pelting it with the pill bottle at just the right moment.
The toilet mimic swallowed the pills, paused, and then immediately grew even more aggressive as it sent its tongue flying at Hiro, where it managed to wrap around his leg, lift him, and slam him into the pavement. He might have died on impact had it not been for Bianca, who used her tendrils to cushion his fall and create a natural spring.
The toilet mimic flung Hiro away and started dry heaving, foam bubbling from its bowl mouth. It scraped against the pavement and attempted to replenish its health through spare trash, each little bit ticking its health bar up by a hair.
Yet the poison from the pills became too much and its health bar plummeted, the creature finally expiring.
You have new followers!
The toilet bowl cracked and produced a glowing orb that rushed toward Hiro and landed in front of him, where it formed into a metal water bottle.
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Legendary Item: Doom System Go Juice
Rank: S
Description: As Hamlet once told Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
But Shakespeare didn't really know anything about the genetic presence of a dopamine receptor known as D4, nor did the Bard of Avon give a gat damn about the mini fatbergs found off the coast of New South Wales, or the troubled history of Sun Yaoting, the last surviving imperial eunuch of Chinese history.
First, the D4 receptor.
A genetic study of more than two thousand prehistoric individuals worldwide found D4 more pronounced in those who migrated over the land bridge than those who maintained a genetic history in one location.
Known as D4 elongation, the part of North America closest to the land bridge showed 32 percent of samples with D4 elongation versus those of South America, where elongation reached an average of 69 percent.
Now, the fatbergs.
Once mysterious blackballs began appearing on the beaches of Sydney, Australia, scientists took notice.
Their initial thought was that the black balls were made of tar. Upon further testing they discovered that they were actually what are known as fatbergs made up of human feces, methamphetamines, hair, fatty acids, food waste, bits of plastic, heart medication, and THC from industrial runoff.
Finally, the eunuch.
Emasculated by his father sometime between 1902 and 1905, Sun Yaoting’s family hoped that castration would gain Imperial influence.
Unfortunately for Yaoting, the village fortune teller had no way of knowing that the country would one day be run by a bear created by A. A. Milne, leading to Yaoting’s preserved genitals being discarded by his family during the Cultural Revolution because they were now considered taboo.
Now, the point.
D4 receptors plus fatbergs plus Yaoting’s discarded genitals were blended together into this handy little concoction, which will give you four sips of the foulest, rankest, and definitely chunkiest brew you’ve ever tasted.
However, each sip will grant you plus one to all of your base stats for an hour.
There’s always a trade off, isn’t there?
Still shaky from the fight, Hiro unscrewed the lid of the drink and gave it a quick sniff. “Phew, that’s bad.” He quickly capped it.
“I’m so glad I don’t have a nose,” Bianca said. “Look at Hachi.”
Hiro glanced over to the dog to see his nostrils in the air as he tried to pick apart the smell. Hachi sneezed and started to growl. The dog’s focus shifted suddenly, ears going alert.
“We’ve got company,” Bianca said as Hiro swiveled around to find a pair of Spectators now standing in the streets, both in red robes. They wore masks like the Bunny Triplets, the ears already flopped to the side and starting to morph into sharpened blades.
Hachi exploded toward the pair as Hiro drew his odachi.
He thought Bianca would take a position on his arm until he saw her bounding forward using her tentacles like legs, where she launched herself at one of the Spectators, flipped around midair, blocked the Spectator’s ears and then grabbed onto her opponent’s waist, Bianca able to bring him down so Hachi could go for the neck.
This left Hiro with his odachi over his shoulder, eyes narrowed on the other Spectator, who rushed toward him only to be beaten back by {Blade Whirlwind}.
Hiro went with {Bounce} from there, his huge sword overhead as he brought it down onto the Spectator, cutting off one of the sword ears and a portion of the head as well.
Soul Essence rushed into him, followed by another whirl of red energy as Hachi and Bianca finished their Spectator.
“The difference between us and other Survivors,” Bianca said as she returned to Hiro, “is that we make this look good. They not like us. I always wanted to say something badass like that.”
Hiro jumped back to the top of a building. There was something looming ahead, he could sense it, and all the yellow eyes in the sky over the city did little to calm his nerves. “Let’s not get too confident,” he told Bianca. “Remember what happened last time.”