The protocol for a second bell being rung was for anyone not in the first position to drop what they were doing and at least analyze the situation. Fighters should prepare to go to aid the beleaguered tower, but support personnel should see how they could help.
That is what led Sophie to come out of the main building as her father was slamming against the ground. She called out to him and started running. During a crisis, she had a satchel on her at all times. It carried many means of healing and other health-based items.
She stopped running when four other figures, all in black, stepped out of the wooded area. The one that threw her dad jumped down, and they converged on each other, heading towards the HQ. She inched back to the HQ door.
Travis and Paul had seen this and were within shouting distance of the men. They seemed not to be paying attention to them, though. Travis quickly called Clyde through their journal comms, “They are hostile; fire at will. Shoot to kill.” He knew there might be hesitation, so he added, “Gary is down.”
Clyde relayed the message to everyone on the tower with him, but particularly Javier. “He said shoot to kill, Javy.” When he saw Javier's look, Clyde said, “I know, but Gary is down. These people are here to cause us harm.” That was all Javier needed to know. A reformed good guy, as he liked to joke, Javy needed a good reason to cause harm, and now he had one. He started loosing arrows into the clumsy attackers. Three were down in less than half a minute.
They had been told that their mission was vital. Yes, some of them might die, but the reward for victory would be immense. There would be journals here and upgrade magic; that is what this group craved more than anything. They were ordered to show themselves and attack slowly, hoping to draw out as many defenders as possible.
The key detail was, as soon as they were attacked, to put the second part of the plan in place. That was to run, ignoring the tower and any defenders, and head straight for the HQ. Once they were with their more powerful faction members, it would just be mop up.
Their leader knew that was bullshit, but if he could take the main characters' HQ, it wouldn't matter that he lost a few NPC faction members. He would control two HQs, which the AI told him meant more powerful upgrades, and he would be the MC. His plan was to go straight for the HQ, activate the capture command, and defend a small bottleneck for 5 minutes, using every potion or scroll he had if necessary. They had the numbers; surprise had been achieved, and from the scouting they could do, it seemed that only about half of the people here were decent fighters. He didn't see what could go wrong.
Travis pulled his sidearm from its holster and clicked the safety off. Paul and he stopped about 25 feet from the four men. They started to pick up speed but not in their direction. “They are going for the HQ,” Paul said.
Travis knew he was right and was pissed at himself for not realizing it. He raised his weapon and aimed it at the men.
“Freeze, make another move, and I'll kill you all!” He wanted to question these men and find out why they were doing this; at least that's what he told himself. Humans now had all types of things to contend with, yet men still acted on their base instincts, why. Paul was surprised that Travis didn't just wipe them out. Who knows if there were other attackers coming from elsewhere. “Fucking shoot them, Travis,” he said in a low voice.
The leader looked at the confidence of this man holding the gun. Did he really think it worked, or was this just a bluff? He had interrogated the person they kidnapped from this faction, Thomas was his name, and he said that there were no surprises waiting for him. If he lied, his death would be slow and painful. The man that now went by the name of Destro stopped walking. He turned to his men, “Go and kill them, and shove that toy gun up his ass.”
At the moment, Travis felt like he was doing the absolute right thing. It was only 20 seconds ago, but he understood his error now. He would have to talk to Sophie or someone; he was still feeling the effects of his last days in Syria, obviously. Travis was nothing if not honest with himself.
He could wipe out entire fields of humanoid monsters, but it was still tough to take the life of a human. He pushed that aside now. Before the men took three steps in his direction, he had fired six shots. One to the chest, one to the head, three times until each man coming towards him and Paul were dead. Unfortunately, Destro prepared for most possibilities. While Travis was erasing his henchmen from the gameboard, he was drinking down a potion. At the same time, he activated his invisibility.
There were six men left, and they ran past the tower heading towards the main building. Javier could not believe how dumb these guys were. He walked to the other side of the platform and took aim. Shot, hit. Shot, hit, but only in the arm; second shot, the man was down.
On the other side of the platform, Clyde leaned out as two of the intruders ran by him close together. As mentioned, Clyde had a strange-looking cylinder contraption around his arm. On the inside, all around were lighters with a switch that activated the fuel on all of them with one.
Gary could barely believe he got it to work, and if someone told him to explain how, he probably couldn't. This allowed Clyde to use his flame hands spell to much greater effect. He would activate the lighters, then fire up his hand and push outward, the cylinder acting as a crude aiming device.
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There was another element for times when he needed extended range. He had a bottle of lighter fluid with a nozzle that sprays it a good distance. Eventually, it would be incorporated into the contraption, but for now, Clyde had it in his left hand. As the guys ran by, he sprayed it on them, at the same time shooting flame from the other hand. This was haphazard at best, but the effect could be devastating to an enemy.
As the men ran past and he hit them with fluid, the flame came out and caught the guy to the left, his neck and the back of his head going up in flames. Fortunately for the other guy, the wind blew the flame back towards his teammate. Like any person would though, the man slowed down to look at what was happening, that gave Javier enough time to put an arrow in his neck. Two birds, one wild-ass flame contraption, and an arrow. Maybe not the most efficient thing in the world, but you worked with what you had. That left 4 guys running towards the HQ. Javy told the others on the lower platform that he would cover this tower, to run after those guys and assist Travis.
Destro had 10 seconds to make his move, and with the potion, his strength was now in the high teens. He had two more men sneaking onto the base, which were his last cards to play. The plan was if everything went right for them to kill anyone getting away, but if like now things weren't going to plan, they were to move unseen towards the HQ.
Destro’s original plan was to use his temporary invisibility to sneak into the HQ and then read a barricade scroll he had. This would set up a near-impenetrable barrier wherever he was for 5 minutes. Now knowing that there was a working gun on this base, he changed plans on the fly. Taking the largest steps he could that were somewhat quiet, Destro snuck up behind the two men.
Travis thought he had a spidey sense for a while, well Clyde told him that's what it was called. After talking to Lucy though, he learned it was his analytical mind skill. His subconscious was constantly evaluating potential dangers, even from things he could not see or even know about. This time it was going off like crazy. His conscious and subconscious were aware that there was a serious threat moving unseen and possibly moving towards him.
This was one of those situations when knowledge of pop culture would have been a big benefit. How do you fight someone that is invincible? Well, people who have seen movies, shows, or read comics know.
You need to throw something tangible and sticky, or something with tons of little pieces. If you can't do that, then you just need to shoot or swing in all directions. This last part was mostly common sense, but the idea of swinging his sword around like a kid at recess was not what Travis considered good defense and he couldn't just start firing a gun in all directions.
Not knowing that his enemy only had 10 seconds, he tried to set up in a defensive stance, waiting and listening, but way too slow. Destro came up right on Travis and, using a pressure point method that he knew (oddly, Travis knew it as well), took the handgun right off of him. He came back into view and was standing on the side of Travis with the gun to his head, “Everybody freeze, or I spray his brains all over the ground.”
Everyone did exactly that; they froze, except one person—Paul. Yes, Paul had been butting heads with Travis, and yes, he pissed him off a lot, but he knew that they needed him. He also thought he knew something else. It was a risk, but he was willing to roll the dice because they couldn't let this one person dictate terms in their base. Would he have risked it if Travis and he had been closer? He prefered not to ask himself that.
The four guys that had broken from the northern tower were approaching, as were the two infiltrators that hadn't been spotted yet. Clyde was behind the four, trying to keep pace.
During his time with Travis, Clyde had really learned a lot. It was just the two of them for days; all they could do was talk for much of the time in the car. Of course, that is where Travis learned what he knew about RPG game rules and theory, but there was an information exchange the other way as well.
Clyde learned that you didn't do your due diligence as Travis preached because you thought you'd find something every time. You did it because the one time you did could be profound.
Travis described it like this: a baseball player was supposed to run out every ground ball. They were taught this not because they expected the fielder to make an error on every play; no, fielding percentages were in the high 90s. No, you ran out every weakly hit ground ball because that one time the fielder did make an error, you wanted to be able to take advantage of it.
Why does that matter here? Because as Clyde was running, he had no expectation that he would see anything if he used his heat vision, but the possibility that he could was worth doing something that cost him very little, like running out a ground ball.
Destro started to feel pretty good again. This was not how things were supposed to go, but he had the only working gun in his hand and pointed at the leader of this HQ, the main character of everything as far as he knew. He had four of his extras coming up to be cannon fodder, and his two operatives were making their way closer to the main building entrance unseen.
There were two things that Destro did not account for, though. One was that the other man near the MC was a maniac ready to risk his leader's life on a whim, a pretty good whim but still. Two was that one of the other PCs had a heat vision spell and would use it as he was running and gasping for air in the middle of a fight because his leader had taught him to.
Paul made his move. He was on the left side of Travis, and the man with the gun was on his right. Paul spun, and as he did, pulled a throwing dart from the bandolier on his chest, throwing it directly at the arm of the man with the gun as his spin reached its end. He figured if he was going to risk Travis's life on a gamble, he would try to disarm the guy first.
Destro, being amped up on potions, felt the move as it started. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. As Paul guessed, the weapon was like the journals, a bound weapon, which could not be used by anyone else. At the same time, Clyde yelled, “There are two more approaching the HQ!” as loud as he could.
Sophie, who had backed up near the entrance, slammed the door shut and locked it seconds before the two men would have been inside.
At the same time, the dart from Paul missed, but Travis was free to act. He spun around and hit his opponent with a back kick. The kick seemed to hit something solid. Destro grabbed his leg, and with his enhanced strength, literally spun Travis around like a ragdoll, knocking Paul back and throwing him. He had dropped the gun as well because it started to give him negative feedback.
The four baddies rushed in on a disoriented Paul as the two infiltrators tried to get inside the HQ. Paul was far superior to the four men attacking him, but there were four, and they had the drop on him. They were running out of time, though, as the other three JTF members from that tower were approaching. Patrick had his spear, and he stuck it into one of the four enemy NPCs. Destro had used his journal to call his two PC teammates over to help in the fight. Then he pulled an axe out of his bag and jumped in the air, ready to come down and impale Paul.