Another day, another snickers bar.
As cortisol rinsed through my system, I immediately noticed there had been changes in my spatial awareness and my peripheral vision was pretty much crystal clear. In fact, my senses in general felt crisper and more interconnected, in the sense that I could hear sounds, such as voices, coming from downstairs and my eyes could almost pinpoint the location where the sound was coming from, and likewise, I could focus on a spot and muffle sound coming from anywhere but that location.
It was bizarre to experience, but that is astounding..How the heck does that work?!
During breakfast, which these days was more a ritual for the young ones than adults actually requiring food, I chatted to Marri about my new abilities and what her plans were for the day, although I left out details since I'd still decided not to mention her to Marri, or anyone for that matter.
It made me uncomfortable when I thought about discussing the topic and I had spent a lot of time internally debating about it, but ultimately I concluded that it was not necessary, and she would only worry about my mental health.
The sensible best course of action would be to wait and see if others experience the same, or come clean if it starts to be a problem..But for now there's no harm in having an imaginary friend, right?
Regardless, people generally had started to be a lot more vague and secretive about their abilities and attributes, leading me to wonder if we were all in this strange situation where indeed everyone had a talkative entity in their own gardens of growth, yet nobody wanted to be the first to put their hand up and admit it.
Such a bizarre thing. Discussing skills felt too personal. It felt...it felt like, bragging? Talking about your performance in bed?..Maybe it's because it's so alien and unknown, it scares the shit out of us? I'm not quite sure..
...
Midday swiftly arrived, and today I was to go on a food run with Catara and I was running a bit late in meeting her. She was one of the few survivors from the pumphouse disaster..and I had been shocked when we were formally introduced and it turned out that she was the shield wielder that had grumpily helped me out.
Her class was something called [Aygys], focused heavily on defense and generally bashing the shit out of things with her shield, and, once on a previous run with her, I made the mistake of calling her ‘Captain Britain’ in reference to another superhero. Which had been all in good jest, of course, but she clearly needed to retaliate, so she got revenge by colluding with Marri into executing 'project-loverboy', pretending that she’d come to her after I’d “made romantic advances on her, begging to be her lover.” And then when confused me was confronted by Marri, the most terrible actor/prankster, she didn’t last 10 seconds before her facade cracked, and yet my shocked face was enough satisfaction for Catara as she came round the corner, both of them pissing themselves on a supposedly successful sting operation..
Absolute cretins....but you gotta laugh.
As I approached the gates, I spotted her leaning back against the wall, arms folded and looking deadpan at me with her piercing blue eyes. Her sandy blonde hair, done in a tight french braid, was hanging over her shoulder and her shield and bag were on the ground next to her. She was wearing her usual protective attire, which consisted of a full getup of modified biker leathers with boots, a stark contrast to my trainers, worker trousers, long sleeve pullover and my bracer armour gloves that had served me well since I obtained them back in the hospital.
Not once have I needed to perform maintenance on them. Durable, delightful things.
I did have a makeshift bandolier with a large breast plate made of stitched together leather, except for a thin sheet of steel sandwiched in the plate that served to give added protection purely for my heart; it was a good balance for me personally since I needed to be as mobile as possible and I couldn’t function as well in full body armour.
“Took your time lover boy.” The corner of her mouth twitched, showing her struggles with maintaining a deadpan face.
“Ha-ha, very funny.” I rolled my eyes but still smiled sincerely.
It was good to be able to make light of the situation still, for me it meant that humanity was still alive and kickin’.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting, I needed to run something past Sylvie.”
I shifted on my feet and scratched the back of my head, unsure how she would react to my next question; she'd got a reputation for being an absolute beast in combat, but the last time she went off on a risky task, she’d nearly been killed at least several times.
“Soooo. Uhhh...Howwwww, do you feel about going to the Aldi store?-It would be completely fine if you're not interested, so no biggie either way!” I drew out my words, reluctant to put pressure on her.
After all, we’ve never been that far out and we could get into considerable danger. It was fairly low risk for me due to being pretty swift on my feet, but for Catara, her speciality lay in heavy defense.
She barely registered any emotions on her face except for raising an eyebrow as she answered.
“The shop? Sure. Why not. I assume there’s specific items we are after?”
“Oh. Cool. Uhm you sure?-” I was genuinely surprised, but relieved she was completely unphased about going.
She shrugged and nodded, “Yup, no complaints from me. I’m going to call dibs on any expensive red wine I see though.”
“Ha! Sounds fair. And yeah, we’re mostly after vitamins, supplements and bathroom items. Sylvie is concerned about sanitisation or comfort for the kids, especially around the new toilets.. But mainly around people coming back covered in blood and general shit. It heavily increases the risk of infection.”
We moved to the entrance and I nodded at the teenagers watching from the gate, signalling we were ready to go out; they raised the make-shift portcullis.
“Hmm. I always thought the healing tonics or med team could cleanse infections?” She mused as we ducked under and headed over towards the wooded path on our right.
“I’m not completely sure on the technicals myself-” I admitted, tilting my head to the side in thought, “-but from a high level perspective, there are different categories I think. One focused on repairing damage and one for removing harmful invaders from the body-” I let out a puff of air “-but yeah, medical stuff to me was pretty much Majik before Majik even made an entrance...Although I've heard Potri is working on a new miracle mix that can just do it all.”
She pursed her lips and nodded in agreement whilst maintaining a careful watch over our surroundings.
We were walking for barely several minutes before I started to hear faint scratching and rustling, and, thanks to my newly improved senses, it didn’t take long for me to notice 4 Notpidgys and 2 nasty looking ex-squirrels honing in on us from the trees from both the left and right sides up ahead.
The ex-squirrel things I’d never seen before, only Steve had witnessed them, and we didn’t venture into the wooded areas unless absolutely necessary for obvious reasons, but the Notpidgys were common enough that we would fight one at least once a day.
The fuckers still shit everywhere.
These ones however, looked slightly different.
A typical Notpidgy was pigeon grey and their bodies were inflated to very large chicken size with wings that were mutated into sinewy muscle and bones, forming into a small claw at the tips, which they used to climb trees and grip onto things rather than flying..But these ones were much darker, almost raven-coloured, and their beaks had a nasty looking sharp hook at the end. Their wings were split into 3 boney thin limbs, each limb had a single claw on the end, but instead of visible bone, the appendages were covered in a dark scaly skin, like a snake almost.
Stolen story; please report.
A new variant perhaps..or a different creature altogether.
The ex-squirrels were hideous. The first thing I noticed was that the tail looked like that of a scorpion, with a nasty looking tri-headed stinger waving around the tip of a half bushy, half carapace tail. Their heads had no skin, just bone, and their jaws split into 4 parts with rows of tiny little thorn teeth decorating the inside.
On the one hand, they were still small little critters, but on the other hand they clearly wanted something to eat.
And I guess we look appetising...
Slowly, I deployed my shields and signalled to Catara that there were creatures up ahead.
Around 98.4 more paces away, to be exact.
“Huh? Seriously? Oh shit yeah... Good eyes...” She muttered as she squinted, looking towards where I was pointing.
“What the fuck. Those things are ugly as shit. Never seen them before.” She uttered under her breath, still mostly deadpan.
“Yeah me neither, let’s hope they leave us be. Can’t be fucked to deal with that shit.” I grumbled, already feeling my anger levels rising.
They weren't an extinction level threat but I really didn’t want to find out what those stingers could do, although we didn’t have much choice however since the alternate route would take us twice as long; a small violence craving part of me hoped they would try something, just so I could justify removing them from the ecosystem.
As we walked closer, the dark Notpidgys started to gain a red outline and I could hear them hissing and clicking their beaks as they aggro'd and sped up. Surprisingly, the ex-squirrels did not glow red and I realised they were moving adjacently towards the scuttling birds, rather than ourselves, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
Catara muttered something as she raised her shield closer to her face and the shield started crawling with dark blue lines of Majik that formed a translucent, dark blue, honeycomb structure that extended around the shield.
“The usual lad. I’ll stun them. You smash them.” She grunted with a slight exertion as the shield extension finished and became almost fully transparent, however if you looked carefully enough you could still see the distortion in the air.
My heart rate quickened as the wingless birds thudded onto the ground 18.9 paces away; they tried to make typical pigeon noises but it would come out distorted, like sound effects crackling and bleeding out through brokens speakers. Their claws were digging into the dirt, propelling them forward faster as they leaned forward and started sprinting on their extended, long legs.
Catara braced against the shield and dashed forward a few steps. I could see debris on the dirty floor being pushed or singed as the extended shield's edge brushed against it, causing the invisible lattice pattern to flicker out in a radial translucent wave in response to each interaction.
Here we go-
The first creature went for the seemingly empty space but impacted the shield, screeching in confusion as it was battered to the side by the invisible extended shield and tumbling across the ground. Blurring forward, I shoulder charged without stopping and caught the monster by its head, continuing to charge forward and dragging it as it squawked until finally slamming it into a tree with a crunch and using my right shield to sever its dazed head.
A bit overkill, but something tells me you can't be too careful.
I randomly pondered if any large chickens had ever killed any chads in a 'watch me 1v1 this chicken bro' scenario, but quickly brushed those thoughts aside as I saw Catara swiping at the now, more cautious remaining bird creatures; one of their claws slashed out and cut into tree bark like it was butter.
Probably a yes then.
The 3 remaining Notpidgys, the name of which I was starting to feel didn't quite do them justice, had spread out in a rather concerning display of cooperation or perhaps even intellect; they were trying to surround her in order to get a back attack in, but Catara was having none of it. She was tracking all 3 of them and moving closer towards whichever one that would try and get behind, prompting angry squawks and the snapping of beaks as the creatures bumped into each other.
At one point they had managed to get into a perfect triangle formation around her, but she simply barged forwards out of it and then they were back to square one.
As I jogged over to help, their patience must have expired because they launched themselves at the shield recklessly.
“Stupid twats!” Catara laughed out as she shifted her grip on the shield's handles and violently swatted all 3 of them down at the same time. Her high strength was shown, as they thudded into the ground, and then, using the edge of the extended shield, she grunted with each slam down as she guillotined them all in rapid succession.
What a beast.
Seeing that they were definitely dealt with, I glanced around to look for the..scorpills? Stingles? Nutters? Huh, maybe I’ll need to ask the community on that one.
But they were sitting up at the top of the trees, still not glowing red, in fact they seemed curious.
“Nice! Good job. You made quick work of them…I was expecting it to get a bit dicey since they looked…more…menacing…tsk, bugger.”
I forgot to try out [Pecho Tech I].
“Hmm?” Catara gave me a funny look.
“Ah don’t worry, I forgot to try something out..” I hated being vague and secretive, but in fairness, Catara had not mentioned her new sci-fi shield powers to me. She shrugged and started to do some checks on her gear.
Looking up at the squirrels, I focused on them and triggered the Pecho Tech skill. A very subtle and very tiny blue laser light flashed in my vision, reminding me a bit of how Xno scanned objects; an instant later my mind was filled with a mental image of the squirrel and some information.
It surprised me, as I was expecting to have a HUD, like an augmented reality or something showing real time data, but it was nothing like that at all. It was exactly like when you recall a number or memory with your eyes open, you simply view it in that black space that didn’t exist in the 3d world-
But rather in my mind's view, so to speak. The minds space.
LABEL = Squirrel
MAGN = 12.150
HP = 80/120
KAR = (+)
Alright, LABEL is name, MAGN is the level of experience; HP is HP and it is missing some health… KAR is unfamiliar, it's just a plus sign? Strange.
Wonder if this will work on the dead ones.
LABEL = Notpidgy
MAGN = 8.021
HP = -35/80
KAR = (--)
That’s a yes. RIP Notpidgy.
A chorus of tiny squeaks grabbed my attention and I looked back over to the Squirrels and realised 2 had become 4.
But the new two were tiny versions of the bigger ones, about half the size of their presumably parents. But they didn’t have skulls for heads nor did they did have the stingers, instead they had multiple thinner bushy tails.
LABEL = Baby Squirrel
MAGN = 0.901
HP = 1/1
KAR = (+)
“Oh my word… That is just adorable!” I glanced at her and raised my eyebrow. Cataras eyes were sparkling as she spotted the tiny little ones, but I was more surprised that she’d actually shown emotion.
The adults were herding and nipping at the little ones that had tried to rush down excitedly towards one of the corpses of the birds.
“Hmm. I think they want to eat the birds. Let's move back and see what they do.” I said to Catara.
Sure enough, when we stepped back a dozen metres and watched, the largest one gave us a long hard stare with its skull socketed eyes before seemingly making up its mind and hopping down. It went up to the first Notpidgy corpse and sniffed it several times before snapping open its split jaws and..it went to fucking town on the flesh.
Blimey-
As soon as it did, the others jumped down and joined in, even the baby ones, but shockingly at least a dozen more squirrels suddenly appeared out of nowhere, both adults and babies and they all dived in on the communal feeding frenzy.
Me and Catara just stood there staring wide eyed in silence, uncomfortably bathing in the sounds of crunching, tearing, angry squeaking and general squirrel talk happening in the background.
“...”
“......”
“We should probably-”
“Yeah. Lets go.”
...
..
.