Ch.37

Things weren’t looking good for the Necro Cowboy... like at all. Chris was finishing off the last two undead he’d been fighting, now, which were in really bad shape after taking a MUCH larger share of the damage share from my last Stomp than they’d gotten from previous attacks, due to the GREATLY reduced number of undead, now!

A few seconds later, Chris finished both of them off with a pair of iaijutsu draw/slashes.

I’ve gotta give Chris credit, he's had even less time than I did to wrap his head around all of this, and he’s totally kicking ass and taking names over there!

The Necro Cowboy made his last mistake as he began trying to cast a spell. I’d been considering letting him go, or at least interrogating him while we considered it, but then he decided to detonate a Fireball at point blank range, just to hit all three of us.

Welp, that pretty much answers any questions about whether or not he deserved any mercy from me. Screw this guy!

Maybe that’s a bit hypocritical of me, but being forcefully confronted with the fact that you’ve been living a giant lie your entire life, and are living in a world filled with all of the bad guys from the fantasy games and novels I grew up playing? Yeah, being confronted by an agent of all of that just pushed a button somewhere deep inside of me.

Fuck the people responsible for all of this!

A Fireball to the face at point blank range might have been nasty... but I have Evasion. Fireballs require you to make a Reflex save if you want to only take half damage, but Evasion lets you take no damage if you save.

I saved. Essentially, I ninja flipped out of the way of the explosion!

It looked like Chris did, too, though I didn’t think he had Evasion, so he took a bit of damage. Luckily, Crimson Count’s Sanguine Claim ability gives a LOT of healing, and he has damned strong healing from being a White Mage to begin with!

We were both fine, though. A moment later, the Necro Cowboy was decidedly NOT fine, as I turned the axe kick I threw at him into a literal axe using Versatile Unarmed Strike at the same time as Chris uncorked another iaijutsu draw and slash with his Black Blade.

My kick collapsed Necro Cowboy’s chest, and Chris decapitated him!

I grinned at Chris. “Those iaijutsu draws are some pretty sweet ass shit, man.”

He smirked. “That lightning bolt to start us off was pretty nice, too. Elemental Spear from Fo4E?

I nodded, grinning, then looked around and sighed. “Whelp. Tonight has been a gigantic clusterfuck.”

Chris nodded his agreement. Tonight’s insanity was obviously still registering for him. “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?”

“Almost assuredly. Taking a cab from anywhere nearby seems like a terrible idea, though. What’s your base move?” I asked.

“Fifty feet for now. I don’t qualify for psionic Feats, so I can’t put my hands on a lot of the sweet assed shit you’ve got. I don’t even have access to it, I checked.”

I nodded. “Let’s talk about that later. Can you cast Invisibility, yet?”

Chris grinned. “Come on, who do you think your talkin’ to, here?”

We exchanged a quick high five. “Sweet. Let’s head downtown, and grab a cab there. Four minutes of Invisibility isn’t near enough to get us home.” I told him.

Chris grinned at him. “One important question before we leave.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” I asked him.

“Are we gonna loot ‘em?” he said with a shit-eating grin on his face.

----------------

Chris didn’t think that he’d ever forget the crazy series of events that led up to his death, or the message that had popped up afterwards.

You are dead.

You have 3 Hero Points available. You may spend 2 of them to Cheat Death.

Do you wish to Cheat Death? (Yes/No)

Like Ray had said, tonight had ended up being a complete clusterfuck! Which was so weird, because it had started out so well... I mean, how many people can say that an incredibly thirsty, hot, Goth chick sucking you off turned out to be a BAD thing!?

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

He’d been worried about Ray ever since he’d gotten into that fight with those Russian gangsters. When he’d come home last month to a house covered in empty shotgun and bullet casings, with blood everywhere, it had nearly broken him.

None of that even remotely prepared him for tonight, though.

Most of his concern was that it had happened to Ray, of course; anyone who isn’t devastated by the death of a friend wasn’t really their friend! Part of it was the sudden realization of his own mortality, though, that it had happened in his own home...

Together it was almost more than he could handle.

Then that shithead shows up just fine a few hours later, and fucking ‘proves’ that he’s a L&L character!

Ray stabbing himself in the hand and then healing it right before his eyes made it pretty hard to doubt what Ray was telling him.

He hadn’t thought Ray was lying to him, but even with evidence that he couldn’t ignore it was a tough idea to swallow. Even if he had his doubts, though, he’d started training at NW Kajukenbo again, and started to get serious about it. It's not like he had hated training there. He'd actually enjoyed it quite a bit, it was just that he liked playing video games with that time a little more...

Less than two weeks later, he’d become a Dreamer.

Of course, just like Ray had warned him, when he was awake, he’d had no clue at all. Knowing every night that he’d wake up the next morning and believe he was normal again had been incredibly frustrating!

While that HAD been annoying, the flip side of it had been incredibly useful... he’d taken some time to nerd out and plan a character build based on what Ray had told him! Having time to plan his build ahead of time had prevented several mistakes he almost assuredly would have made. Legends and Labyrinths had been one of his favorite hobbies since he was in 6th grade and had first discovered it... so him sitting down to make a character wasn’t really asking him to do something he didn’t already enjoy!

The weirdest part of it all was how accurate the game was to what he had seen of the system that The Grand Method used to let Dreamers and Awakeners advance! It left him with only two possible conclusions, either the GM had based things off of L&L, or L&L was somehow based off of reality!

I’m not sure which of those is actually scarier. Damn!

All of that aside, what he’d gone through tonight had been simultaneously the most exhilarating and the most terrifying things to ever happen to him!

After all, when he was Dreaming, if he died, he just got back up. The most annoying part was going back to recover his Records, if he even thought that he could.

This was for keeps, though!

The part that had surprised him the most wasn’t dying, though. It was how easy it all was to do! He’d expected things to be different in the real world compared to how it felt when he was Dreaming, but it really wasn’t.

Ray firing a bolt of lightning had been even more of an eye opener. Chris had decided to go for a hybrid melee/caster build because he didn’t think magic would work on Earth, at least not until the GM made its announcement and everyone became an Awakener. Without access to magic, he wanted to be sure he could defend himself, and the build he decided on gave him good options all around.

Eh, stop kidding yourself! You love every moment of this weeaboo Edge Lordy bullshit character you’ve made yourself into!

Another few levels and he’d be able to turn his Black Blade katana, that he got as part of being a Bladebound Magus, which he’d named Occam, into a Casting Implement. That would let him really take advantage of the Magus class’s ability to combine swordplay and spell work into a united whole. Basically, once Occam was a Casting Implement, the enchantments on his sword would add to his spells!

Pluses to hit, Bane and Nemesis enchantments, bonus elemental damage, all of it would just tack right onto his spells and their metamagic effects! There was a Feat that did the same thing, but Casting Implements did many other things, as well; and he pretty much NEEDED access to all of them!

The fact that Occam was not only intelligent but also an excellent confidant, advisor, and helper was amazing, too. From now on he’d be in constant contact with it... which felt more than a little weird.

Occam: Please. You love having me around, boss! I. AM. THE. GREATEST!

Chris: *snort* Yeah, yeah, sure buddy. You’re the bestest evah!

Occam: Hey, hey, hey! What’s up with that? Didja even SEE how I chopped those undead fools ta pieces? Come on, admit it! My hop-choppy action and yer skills equals undead dismemberment!

Chris: *sigh* Yeah, you’re right. You are definitely pretty damned great! That WAS really awesome... but I’m gonna need you to spend like twenty-five percent less time telling me to chop the bad guys up, ok? You almost ruined my concentration when I was trying to cast and use techniques there a few times.

Occam: I... What? I’m sorry boss. *mumbles* jus tryin’ ta help... *sniff*

Chris: *sigh* Occam, what did I tell you about your name?

Occam: That I’m name after Occam’s Razor, which despite how cool it sounds, actually isn’t a magi-tactical super weapon or sumthin’. It means the simplest solution is usually the correct one.

Chris: Uh, huh. Now, apply that to what we were just talking about?

Occam: *humph* I get it. Ok, I get it boss. Yer not upset at me, ya just need to tell me when I’m doin’ stuff right and wrong.

Chris: *smiling* Exactamundo, good buddy! If I was mad at ya, I’d tell ya I was mad at ya! You’re gonna be way too important to what I have planned for me to not do my best to make you as awesome a helper AND weapon as I can.

Occam: Daa-aaww. Thanks, boss.

That was actually very true. Occam was essentially his wizard’s familiar and his weapon AND his Harry Potter-style wand, all rolled up into one... and since Occam had its own, separate Arcane Pool, linked to his, of course; it meant that eventually it would be able to do so much more than it could currently.

They had indeed taken the time to loot the pack of undead and their leader, as Ray’s concerns about the items being tracked were countered quickly by Chris’s simple logic... that being that Ray’s Sense Supernatural was basically a super magic sense, and the level of magic necessary to hide from it would mean the other side had easy access to 7th+ circle magic... in which case they were screwed anyway.

So, they’d grabbed everything that looked worth something, except the necromancer’s ivory wand. Both because Ray was pretty sure it was made from a human bone and because it looked like it might have a blood bond of some kind on it, which might make it easy to track.

They had ended up with five magical amulets, one on each ghast, and ninteen magical rings. One for each ghoul. The necromancer had two rings and a pair of bracers, plus what they were pretty sure was an actual Bag of Holding!

It seemed like a pretty great haul, actually, but they’d have to see what it all actually turned out to be; and they didn’t have the time to identify thirty some odd magic items right now!

He and Ray had reached downtown Portland just a few minutes ago and were sitting in a Taco Bell nearly two miles away, enjoying some cheap Mexican food and a few sodas.

The fast-food place was mostly empty, surprisingly, though the news on the TV about a fire that had broken out on the second floor of a building across from the Rock-’n-Bowl, leading to a gas explosion was both amusing and answered a lot of questions they both had.

“Not super surprising to find out that a magical shadow government has control over the media, now, is it?” Ray said in a low voice, with a pretty decent amount of snark to it.

Chris nodded. “Yeah, it's hard to assume anything about that, now, isn’t it? Do you think they completely control the government at all levels, or do they just not let ‘em know what’s really going on?” He also kept his voice down.

Ray shrugged. “Not really sure, but it seems like the sensible answer is probably both? I’m sure key people know what’s up and everyone else just gets their memories wiped if they find out something they’re not supposed to; that's probably what happened to those poor FBI agents. Hell, I almost dread finding out how many times a year that happens to the average person.”

Ray had of course informed Chris about the video where Red Skull Mask guy confronted Vlad and Victoria Federov, and the Sign she had used to remove the memories.

Yeah, Ray’s probably right. Magic like that is very different from most stuff in L&L, though I guess that’s not surprising. Still, its insidious as hell. Literally.

“You done?” Ray asked him.

“Yeah. What’s up?” Chris asked.

“I’m not completely sure, but I think we should get outta here. I’ve spotted a few people outside acting oddly a few times... it’s making me a little nervous.”

“Let's get out of here, then.” Chris said.