NOW.
Trey watched in fascination as gleaming metallic tubes slid smoothly back into his palms. The dazzling lights sparkled prettily from the ceiling, washing the large room in rainbows and magic. Shapes moved all around him, weaving a delicate pattern of perfection, and he marveled at the variable beauty of reality in all of its complexity.
He let out a happy sigh, even as distant expletives echoed up from the depths of his psyche. Then, a new voice filled his mind.
Highest Herbage! Those brain-blasted morons really did a number on you, didn’t they?
Trey simply smiled as a wall of pirates leapt over a barricade of tables and charged down nearby aisles of slot machines.
Sorry to do this to you, but I’ve been clean since the war. It’s… not going to be pleasant.
Activating [Full Detox].
At first, those words bounced meaninglessly around in Trey's consciousness. Then they appeared as actual words, big and bold, and the lights that had once danced beautifully before his eyes turned harsh, their glare transforming into something fierce and angry, as external voices began to filter through Trey's drug-addled fog.
“Whatever he was about to do isn’t working!” Tater’s crisp voice snapped harshly at Trey’s right-hand side.
“We don’t need him for this! Let's kick some pirate booty! FOR THE BOYS!!!” Another voice snarled from Trey’s left.
The indistinct shapes surrounding him rushed forward to clash with the incoming tide of pirates–just as the teeth-jarring, eye-squeezing hammer-blow of reality hit him in the cerebral cortex. Trey was pounded all out once with a throbbing headache so severe that he was shocked into absolute sobriety as his whole system reeled from chemical whiplash.
[Awareness] kicked into overdrive, deciding to be actually useful for once, and pulled in details from the scene around him. His friends and some weird luchador-ninja robots crashed into the line of pirates who had charged forward. As the pain in Trey’s head redoubled, he tried to gasp and found himself thrust in the back seat of his own mind–almost gently, this time–once again.
AHHHH! HOLY MOTHER, THAT HURTS!
“Sorry kid. I used to be quite the toker, but I don't touch the stuff anymore,” a low and somehow grandfatherly voice said using Trey’s mouth.
Two luchador-ninjas launched a third twenty feet into the air and it somersaulted into its arc before plummeting back down, leading with its elbow and crashing into the front line of pirates.
Argh! I really wish they would stop drugging me! Is there anything you can do? [Awareness] isn’t really painting me the best picture here.
“Keep it together kid, I think they are doing better than you think,” the grandfatherly voice replied, weighing the monumental clash of forces playing out in front of him.
Cheetah Brains, who was apparently on their side now, dodged through enemy combatants easily, hamstringing and disarming as he went. Stew, who stood off to the side in a dirty chef’s apron, was slinging fiery sludge from his ladle at any flankers off the line. Meanwhile, Catherine had taken a nearby stage as high ground and established an overwatch position, laying cover fire with brutal rockets and wicked grenades, trying to open a hole for a counter charge.
The explosives weren’t as effective as they should’ve been. The pirates and their auras of corrosion seemed to pull them apart, weakening their blasts and allowing the yellow-coated sea dawgs to bat aside the dangerous projectiles with their rusty sabers.
“Name’s Maurice by the way, although the rest of this motley crew only uses my call sign: The Joker,” the voice continued, jumping into the fray. He fell in beside Tater Tot–who’d just taken a cutlass through his chest–and a luchador-ninja.
The aphid’s movements were haphazard, almost drunk. As he fought with Trey’s body, he tripped and lurched–even tumbling over a nearby craps table. But with each of his strange, almost random actions, Maurice somehow managed to dodge a swipe of a rusty blade or avoid a stray shot from a flintlock pistol.
Trey observed, dumbfounded, as the aphid piloted his body in a graceful symphony of near misses.
Maurice swiped the stray dice that had fallen behind the craps table, pocketing most, but dropping a few into Geneva’s [Inventory]. Two sets, though, he kept. One clutched in each hand.
“I was finally gonna get to try some ‘za with the BOIS!” Vice Roid screamed in frustration, hefting a massive roulette wheel just ahead of them. With a grunt, the root covered hypertrophied bodybuilder hurtled it at a trio of pirates. They’d just finished tearing into a few of the luchador-ninjas, and they weren’t ready for the impact. The solid wood of the roulette wheel cracked and crumbled, but it didn’t lose any of its impressive force.
The three pirates fell to the floor, prone and bleeding from a thousand deadly splinters.
“Got ‘em Vice!” called Stew, as he hurled flaming slop at the pile of wounded yellow coats and broken wood. It caught fire immediately and began pumping out greasy yellow smoke.
“Stay hard!” spat Vice Roid, before turning to find something else to hit. To no one’s surprise, he was extremely good at hitting things.
Wow, you might be right. We’re taking losses, but it actually looks like we are going to win one! Trey exalted internally, even as nausea continued to roil up from his stomach and his hands continued to shake. Whatever Maurice had flushed out of his system, it hadn’t left without leaving behind a fair set of serious consequences.
“Don't jinx us!” Maurice shouted in dismay, drawing the attention of several nearby combatants.
Of course, that’s when it hit.
The pounding in Trey’s head, the shaking in his extremities, and the building warmth creeping up his esophagus became too much even for the battle-hardened aphid pilot to hold back. Their stomach did a full front flip and then spasmed uncontrollably.
Trey had a moment to wish that losing control of his body also included losing all sensation, before he hurled up everything he had in his stomach, releasing a medley of yellows and browns all over the polished marble floor.
Trey’s right hand shot to the side of the table to steady himself, and the pair of dice fell out, rolling across its green felt surface.
“Well, let's see what-BLARGGGH–Lady Luck has for us,” Maurice sputtered between lingering dry heaves, eyes fixated on the bouncing die. “I swear, the things I do in the name of my Matriarchal Flora.”
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Behind Trey, completely unnoticed, was a pirate with an almost-new yellow jacket and a dented bicycle helmet. The sea dawg tossed aside an unconscious Tater Tot like a sack of potatoes. The friendly spud had thrown himself in the way of danger to take a killing blow that was meant for the heaving Host, trying to buy time.
The strangely-fit and clean-shaven pirate stalked ever-closer, but his position was exposed as Cratherine let out a robotic scream, charging into the fray from her overwatch position.
The rest of the gang, locked in their own battles, were unable to come to the Host’s aid.
The cyclist-pirate’s eyes shone with cracked glee as he reared his pitted saber back. The chains around his shoulders rattled, and he leapt forward in a huge lunging step, bringing his blade swinging down to doom his target.
Trey didn’t notice. His eyes were locked in fascination on the die as the bounced, waiting for them to finish an achingly slow final turn. When the die settled, two numbers flashed inside his head.
🎲 1 & 1 🎲
[Optional: Win a round of dice by rolling Snake Eyes] Complete.
Warning: Please head to a safe location to receive your [Reward].
“Bountiful flora, it's been a while since I dropped a deuce. Looks like you'll have to wait on that [Reward], though,” Maurice said, eyeing the dice suspiciously as a huge crash sounded right behind him. He jumped up and turned to find a pirate in a ridiculous outfit of spandex, reflectors, kneepads, and a yellow coat lying face-down in a puddle of vomit. His rusty saber had somehow ended up sheathed in his own shoulder, pinning him to the floor with a serious case of tetanus.
Did that guy slip while trying to attack me? And why does he look so familiar?
“No time to explain. Not right now, at least. We have to stop this at its source. My gut tells me this is just the opening act,” Maurice said, again scanning the room, searching past the rotting pirate corpses, scattered robot parts, and their mostly unharmed allies.
Maurice took a deep breath and yelled out over the noise, “Anyone see where the cap-”
BOOM.
An explosion sounded off from the same back stairway that they had entered through. Maurice whipped Trey’s head around to see four bulky robots, draped in tan trenchcoats, entering through the smoking, smoldering opening. The first three fanned out in a protective formation, while the fourth bent down amongst the wreckage and picked up two grease-soaked boxes and the other, which was labeled in all-caps permanent marker with the word, ‘PANCAKES.’ It dusted them off with precise mechanical movements.
“TARGET ACQUIRED. STAND DOWN. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING. IF YOU. ATTACK. YOU WILL. DIE. ALLOW US. TO LEAVE. PEACEFULLY,” the trenchcoated robot droned, backing up toward the doorway.
“No. No. NO!” Vice Roid roared. His baritone warble of agony communicating to the whole room the depths of his rage and the pain of his woe-wracked sorrow. “Not the pizza!”
“Leave the Pizza! We have bigg-” Maurice tried to shout.
“ATTACK!” snarled Stew.
“FOR THE BOYS!” Cheetah cried.
Ignoring Maurice and Trey, the three goons charged the mechanical pizza-thieves. The robots threw open their jackets, revealing numerous piston-driven arms holding every kind of weapon imaginable. But none of that mattered to the comrades-in-friendship. Their eyes were hard set on the greasy boxes of pizza.
Cratherine, though, held back. She had reached Tater and had the potato cradled in her arms as she mashed different parts of his body together while heating up her frying compartment.
“Mother Planter!” Maurice growled in frustration.
You’ve got to help them. Do the dice thing again!
“Tsk,” the aphid spat, tossing his reserve pair out and digging through the [Inventory] for another pair. The die clattered across the polished floor, oddly loud amongst the renewed clamor of battle. Again, numbers popped up inside Trey’s mind.
🎲 4 & 3 🎲
“Ha, seven! That’ll do!” Maurice crowed, turning away from the melee.
Out of the periphery of his vision, Trey glimpsed a blade that barely missed Cheetah Brains tangle itself in a different trenchcoated robot’s arm. On closer inspection, he realized the robots all had suddenly lost their ability to coordinate their strikes.
One robot fell into the splits as its boot hit the puddle of grease left by the pizza boxes, and as its arms flailed in dismay, it shoved a blowtorch-wielding appendage into the path of another’s cleaver chop. Another swung with wild abandon, axe sailing over Stew’s shoulder and cleaving into the marble floor. They continued to fight, but took hits they shouldn’t have, missed easy blows, and devolved into an almost comedic series of errors and foibles as the goons pressed their advantage, eager to retrieve the pizza, pancakes, and their pride.
Your power makes people lucky?
“I affect probability kid,” Maurice sighed distractedly, still searching the large room for something. Most of the casino's previous patrons had managed to vacate the building by now, but a couple rectangular blocks of muscle and fat in suits were sneaking around the perimeter, tiptoeing toward a nondiscript door opposite the main entrance.
“Bingo,” Maurice said, moving to follow. The sound of furious combat continued behind him, and a disturbingly erotic moan sounded from the area where Catherine was reconstituting Tater Tot.
“All of this will be for nothing if we don't stop whoever’s leading these corsairs. There’s got to be a rust-spewing captain wanna-be somewhere, and I bet whoever it is, they’re here for more than an easy cash grab. I’d put all my money on him being back there. Places like these, especially on their grand openings, always have something special going on behind closed-doors.”
I’m sorry, what? I thought they were just attacking to steal money from the vault and all the rich people here. You think the pirate leader is after something else?
“Most definitely. They are after something much more valuable than money, I guarantee it,” Maurice whispered, surreptitiously working his way over to the back door, where two more blocks in suits had made an appearance. They security guards were huddled up in a furious discussion that Trey couldn’t quite make out–until Maurice slid behind the cover of an overturned slot machine, five or so feet away.
“Everyone shut up! We need to get in and get the Mayor out. It’s that simple. Big Jim, you’re on the door. Large Tom, move in first and shoot anything that’s not supposed to be there. Jer Bear and I will get hands on the Mayor and get out,” the leader said in a harsh whisper, glaring through a set of sunglasses.
“It’s never that simple,” Maurice sighed under his breath, tossing his last set of dice on the floor and watching them roll.
“3, 2, 1! GO GO GO!” shouted the leader. Big Jim front-kicked the door and dove aside. Large Tom followed, shotgun raised, vigilant in his posture. The other guards followed on their tails, pointing their weapons to cover every angle.
As the dice clattered to a stop, Trey winced at the booming sound of shotgun fire echoing out of the doorway.
🎲 6 & 6 🎲
“Box cars! It’ll have to do, kid. That's it for this old space cowboy. You're going to need the big guns for this one,” Maurice said sadly, standing Trey up from their crouch and moving over to get a good look at what lay beyond the door.
[NEW SYNCHRONIZATION!] - 07.77% | (M) Maurice
Trey felt him leave, felt the return of his motor functions, as he looked on at a scene of chaotic abandon.
“Mother Planter!” he mumbled to himself, jaw hanging open. “How am I going to get through that?”
Watch your language, young one! A fresh voice, this one sounding like a wise old master, chastised from within Trey’s head. Do not fret. There is always a way. Listen carefully, now.