With the last punch to her stomach, Gomiko’s knees buckled. She would’ve collapsed but the ropes around her wrists kept her upright at the cost of jarring her shoulders. That additional bit of pain peaked through the throbbing aches already peppering her body from the feet up. Her view of the floor was abruptly replaced with an angry brown face.
“Come on you fucking trash panda. This can be over any time you want,” said Iskandar.
Gomiko was familiar with all of Team Daji, especially their team leader, the coldly sadistic fox woman watching Gomiko’s torture with a look of mild amusement.
Of those at the top of the Use-Rankings when Team Harald was active, Team Daji was on top the longest, a position they kept through naked brutality. They were notorious for killing other Heroes attempting to use their grinding spots. Their takeaway from the decline of the 1st and 2nd generation of Heroes had apparently been that playing nasty was the way to stay on top. This lasted until the 5th and 6th generations of Heroes rendered them obsolete and by that point the Yishang had learned their lesson and stepped in to micromanage the top spots in order to avoid another Team Daji situation. Gomiko managed to avoid a run-in with them. Until, that was, yesterday.
“I don’t know anything! H-He left a week ago! I didn’t even know where he was!” Gomiko screamed, each word crawling out of her throat through choked sobs.
“She’s lying,” Daji said.
The fox woman’s occasional interjections were spoken like a poet musing about their subject. Or like Sofiane picking an outfit. Daji’s was a refined kind of sadism, focusing on the tiny details rather than being content with just any pain. Awful as the torture already was, Gomiko might have taken some comfort if all four of Team Daji looked as uncomfortable as Iskandar, Sansho, and Adelaide, all of whom were doing this because they were desperate for a special advantage over Sofiane and the rebellion he was supposedly leading. But Daji herself didn’t care. The need for privileged intel was a pretense for cruelty, not the other way around.
“I’m not lying!” Gomiko said, tears running down her cheeks. Her plea was no use, but the words came unbidden. The intellectual part of her brain had shut down the moment Iskandar’s fist drove into her stomach.
Daji stood up from the crate she’d been sitting on and walked over to Gomiko, twisting in the air. Sapphire claws matching Daji's deep blue, furry ears traced Gomiko’s stomach like someone following a road map. Gomiko shuddered. When she found what she was looking for, Daji tapped her finger a little ways up Gomiko’s rib cage on the left.
“Hit her right here,” Daji said, moving behind Gomiko to hold her in place. Gomiko tried to thrash away, but her toes barely brushed the floor. She whimpered and tightened her abs.
When the punch came, she could tell something was different. It hurt the same, but a second later she felt contractions in her stomach and chest and suddenly vomited on herself. Iskandar, for his part, turned away, neck and jaw tightening in revulsion at what he’d done. From behind her, Daji’s giggling tickled Gomiko’s ears and her nails grazed down her neck.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to cooperate right away. Take your time. We’ve got another eight days before we need to kill your little boyfriend and his pals. So long as you tell us what we want to know before then, we can play as long as you want, my dear little raccoon.”
It took all of Gomiko’s willpower not to cry at that. Her teammates were behind a locked door across the room, but Daji had made sure they could hear everything. Gomiko refused to give the fox woman the satisfaction of using her to rattle them, so she bit down on her lips until they dribbled blood and kept her sobs to a quiet mewl.
“Aw, you’re trying so hard. Iskandar? What should we do to her next?” Daji asked.
If only they hadn’t taken her friends, Gomiko could have slipped the ropes and made a run for it with her Bake-Danuki ability, but Daji had promised if she tried that they would dimension-jump one of her friends and try again with the remaining two. Without a rod of her own, there was nothing Gomiko could do and nothing she could tell them. All she could do was grasp for a lie that might make them stop.
“Maybe if we wait long enough that purple-haired prick will come here himself,” Sansho said.
The Shikijiman Tempo-Mage in red-and-gold court robes fanned himself. He was trying to appear nonchalant, but just like Adelaide and Iskandar, he was antsy to be done with torturing someone. He clearly knew Daji was content to savor all eight days between then and whatever Special Event the Yishang had planned.
“Maybe,” Daji said, smiling mischievously and covering her fanged mouth with a silk sleeve. “Wouldn’t that be nice? We can dimension-jump Sofiane and collect our reward. Though… maybe we ought to capture him first and see if he can tell us anything interesting about the Yishang.”
Gomiko’s blood ran cold. She couldn’t allow Sofiane to walk into a trap because of her. She had to think of something, but all she had were her words. What could she possibly tell them? What did she even know about them? Was the chink in their armor Daji’s sadism? No, it wasn't. Uncomfortable though the others were, they'd been complicit in Daji’s cruelty for years. One little raccoon girl begging for mercy wouldn’t change that. There had to be something else, but the problem was she didn’t think like them, and she tried her best to avoid interacting with Heroes who did. How could she possibly know what was going through their minds? Except, no, she did know someone who thought like that: Sofiane.
More accurately, he used to think like that.
When Gomiko and Sofiane first met, he'd been a different person. The type of person who murdered Harald over a piece of dungeon treasure. Back then Sofiane had been more competitive, more selfish, more individualistic, but by the time he was flirting with her in the sushi restaurant, he was on his way to changing. Even then, it wasn’t until he lived with Team Harald for a couple years before he truly mellowed out and started thinking about the needs of others. The stories he told her about competing amongst his own teammates for experience and equipment sounded incredibly toxic. Sofiane used to complain that the Heroes on top were barely even teams, and if it was possible to advance solo, they would.
Gomiko gasped as she realized what she had to do. Fortunately, the gasp coincided with Iskandar bringing a pipe down on her shins right where her calves ended in dark fur, and they thought nothing of the gasp.
“No! I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Stop, p-please!”
“Oh?” Daji said. The fox woman stepped in front of Gomiko and lifted her chin up with one sharp, sapphire claw. “What do you have to tell us?”
“S-Sofaine, h-he—” Gomiko paused to sniffle. The acting came easily considering she was scared shitless this wouldn’t work. “—H-He said the Y-Yishang were only going to promote one person, like with N-Natsuko! B-But that he’d come back for me…”
Those two words, “one person,” were all she had to say. Daji let Gomiko’s head droop down and turned to face her teammates who were all looking at one another. One. Person. Meaning it wouldn’t be the team who killed Sofiane that would receive a reward, only the single Hero who did the deed. No sharing.
“She’s lying,” Daji said, but her teammates watched her put her hand on the FDJ rod at her waist and they grabbed for their own.
Fear and paranoia filled their eyes and Daji, sensing she needed an advantage over her hostile teammates, sliced the rope connecting Gomiko to the rafters with her claws and caught her, intending to use the raccoon girl as a human shield. Gomiko struggled, but bound hand and foot and exhausted from the punishment she had taken, she went nowhere.
“Well now, what happens next, I wonder?” Daji said, the only one with a grin on her face.
“You two!” Adelaide barked at Sansho and Iskandar. “We get her first and then we’ll settle this amongst ourselves.”
The grin washed off Daji’s face as she backed towards the corner of the warehouse they were in, dragging her raccoon shield with her. Gomiko had a plan, but the timing had to be right or she would be dimension-jumped. Daji’s three teammates approached, spreading out to force her to defend 90 degrees of angle. She swung out in wide arcs to keep them back.
“You’re gonna regret this you pitiful fucks,” Daji said, her calm dominance dissolving into wild fury. “I’ll kill two of you and whoever’s left I’m gonna cut apart, piece by piece. You know I’ll fucking do it!”
“You’re not doing a gods-damned thing backed in that corner,” Iskandar said, trying to hide the fear in his eyes.
Exploiting their rattled nerves, Daji went on the offense. She lunged at Adelaide, lifting Gomiko up with her other arm to block an attack from the other two. In that split second, a plume of smoke exploded in Daji’s hand. Ropes fell to the ground around a clay tanuki statue. Daji had barely enough time to react, but she blocked Sansho’s follow-up lunge and riposted, jumping him before fluidly changing directions to catch Adelaide leaping at her. Within one short second, only she and Iskandar remained, facing each other like two fencers.
Gomiko waited until both were transfixed by their rival before poofing back into human form, snapping up one of the rods, and scurrying for her teammates. As she ran, she turned around and threw every potion she had, stunning, tripping, slowing, and blinding her two former torturers. The moment their status effects wore off, Daji and Iskandar flailed at each other. The victor, by the difference of an inch, was Daji, who clipped Iskandar’s ankle and sent him through the floor. Heart pounding, Gomiko smashed the door’s bolt off with her rod and kicked the door in. Harald, Faisal, and Margaret shot to their feet.
“Run! Run!” was all Gomiko could think to say.
“Faisal, Margaret, grab her and help her to the exit,” Harald said.
How silly, Gomiko thought. She was perfectly capable of sprinting for the exit. But the moment Harald took the rod from Gomiko's hand and moved to block off Daji from pursuing them, her adrenaline let up its iron grip and a wave of fatigue dragged her towards the floor. Margaret and Faisal kept her from falling and threw her arms around their shoulders, lifting her towards the exit. Daji watched with a malicious grin.
“I’m still coming for you, my little trash pandal. I’m gonna get Sofiane, and then I’m gonna get you,” she said, wiggling her fingers at a half-unconscious Gomiko.
Walking backwards with his furious eyes fixed on Daji, Harald slammed the door to the warehouse shut and locked it. He would’ve killed her then and there, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Not after Gomiko had secured their escape.
“Fucking psychopath…” he muttered, wondering what the hell Sofiane had gotten them mixed up in.
Statistics:
Harald Omnibane
Level: 59
EXP To Level:
3,430,981
Class: Bazouk
Earth Elemental
HP: (13,890 | 36,349)
STATS
Force: 435
Vitality: 330
Finesse: 102
Cognition: 41
Insight: 101
ABILITIES
PASSIVE:
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Runic Rage — When all abilities are on cooldown, gain 50% attack speed and regain 15% of physical damage as health.
ACTIVE:
Brutal Charge — Run down an enemy, stunning them for a few seconds and increasing damage dealt by all sources in proportion to Force state.
ELEMENTAL:
Deep Roots — Draws power from the soil and gives them damage reduction based on both Vitality and Insight for so long as the user is attacking someone.
ELEMENTAL:
Blood Shield — Swings halberd in a wide arc and provides a temporary shield based on amount of enemies hit.
DESPERATION ART:
Bull of the Earth — Increases movement speed, attack speed attack power, crit chance, and crit damage by a small amount, increasing proportionally to health missing to a maximum of 500% at 10% HP. Base values are determined by Force and Vitality stats.
USAGE STATISTICS
USE-RANKING
#156/205
USE-NUMBER:
6,521 Emanations
ART NUMBER:
1,001
ERO-ART NUMBER:
211
FIC NUMBER:
12,304
Faisal Hashemi
Level: 59
EXP To Level:
3,687,667
Class: Cuirassier
Wind Elemental
HP: (13,890 | 13,890)
STATS
Force: 54
Vitality: 180
Finesse: 402
Cognition: 245
Insight: 148
ABILITIES
PASSIVE:
Desert Spice — Any attack-boosting dishes cooked by the user are 25% more effective.
PASSIVE:
Excessive Gallantry — Attacking an enemy who is targeting the user's teammate, while they themselves are being attacked, gives both enemies a 33% miss chance.
ACTIVE:
Whip Kiting — Deals damage to target while also restraining them with the user's whip. For a brief time they can move the restrained target in certain directions.
ELEMENTAL:
Become Wind — Turns the user into a gust of wind, becoming untargetable and giving all teammates nearby evasion, movement speed, and attack speed increased by Finesse as well as Insight.
DESPERATION ART:
Mirage — User and all teammates gain increased evasion and %HP regen. Attacking enemies have a chance to deal damage to themselves.
USAGE STATISTICS
USE-RANKING
#185/205
USE-NUMBER:
1,871 Emanations
ART NUMBER:
2,702
ERO-ART NUMBER:
2,680
FIC NUMBER:
21,507
Gomiko
Level: 59
EXP To Level:
3,899,751
Class: Grenadier
Water Elemental
HP: (22,496 | 22,496)
STATS
Force: 40
Vitality: 233
Finesse: 220
Cognition: 130
Insight: 395
ABILITIES
PASSIVE:
Dumpster Hunter — Sniffs out enemies and quest objectives in a 5km radius
PASSIVE:
Rapid Replenish — Grenade replenish speed and effect duration is tied to both Insight and Finesse.
ELEMENTAL:
Tanuki Brewing — Throws out a specially-brewed mixture that causes different effects in a repeating order. CAPACITY: 15/15
1. Deals water elemental damage over time.
2. Slows enemy movement and attack speed.
3. Trips Enemy or Increases Attack and Movement Speed of teammate.
4. Blinds and stuns enemies.
5. Gives a 5%/sec HP regen buff to all teammates.
ACTIVE:
Bake-Danuki — Shapeshift into an inanimate object to temporarily gain 100% evasion.
DESPERATION ART:
Throw Them All! — Instantly regain all Tanuki Brewing charges and detonate all five at once with 200% effectiveness.
USAGE STATISTICS
USE-RANKING
#166/205
USE-NUMBER:
5,444 Emanations
ART NUMBER:
3,257
ERO-ART NUMBER:
5,696
FIC NUMBER:
9,342
Margaret Fratelli
Level: 57
EXP To Level:
650,249
Class: Aggro-Mage
Fire Elemental
HP: (7,643 | 7,643)
STATS
Force: 26
Vitality: 110
Finesse: 166
Cognition: 355
Insight: 329
ABILITIES
PASSIVE:
Conjuration School — 25% chance to create an extra item when crafting.
PASSIVE:
Aggressive Intellect — For the purposes of damage scaling, Cognition and Insight are considered a combined stat.
ELEMENTAL:
Fireball — Launches a ball of fire that deals damage in a straight line.
ELEMENTAL:
Cold-Seeking Missiles — Throws five small fire darts that lock onto an enemy dealing increasingly more damage and causing them to take more damage from allies.
DESPERATION ART:
Fire Walk With Me — Turn into a floating ball of fire that cannot be damaged and launch projectiles every 0.5 seconds at enemies within range.
USAGE STATISTICS
USE-RANKING
#204/205
USE-NUMBER:
95 Emanations
ART NUMBER:
6,662
ERO-ART NUMBER:
10,982
FIC NUMBER:
24,811