Ch.38
As Chris and I stepped out of Chez Taco Bell, I thought for just a moment that I had overreacted.
Then the wind shifted and I realized that it was more likely that I had massively underreacted!
We were surrounded by a LOT of somethings that smelled like shit... and I meant that literally!
I groaned. “Do you have any silver? Or access to bane versus lycanthropes?” I asked Chris.
“Uh, yes to both, actually. My main Combat Art is Argent Tide.” he told me.
Argent Tide is a sword style basically created to fight Evil monsters. It was all about three, well four things, I guess. First, it was all about fast drawing swords as a part of a devastating attack, a technique made famous by several Japanese sword masters and generally referred to as iaijutsu.
Second, many of its maneuvers coalesce an energy around the Argent Tide user’s weapon to make it do damage as if it were a silver weapon. Silver weapons bypass the damage reduction of lycanthropes, as well as most Evil Spiritbound like demons and devils, often referred to as Sinbound.
Third, many of its moves also give the enemy struck by them an allergy to silver, making it so that they take +50% damage from strikes BY silver.
Lastly, they can generate sword beams/energy slashes with many of their iaijutsu strikes that can strike foes at a distance! The higher level versions of these techniques can do ridiculous amounts of damage!
“Oh, neat! That’s where all the cool iaijutsu moves were coming from. You’re gonna need them. I smell at least a dozen wererats all around us, and probably a lot more of them than that...”
Chris groaned. “Of course there are. The Portland Underground is practically perfect for them.” he said as he groaned and rolled his eyes.
Fog had been rolling in for the last half an hour or so, basically since just after we walked into Taco Bell. Since I had made no effort to keep my voice down, they didn’t bother to hide anymore, stepping out of alleys, hopping down off of roofs, and stepping out of a variety of hiding places.
They didn’t look like ratmen right now. Instead, they looked like a combination of skate punks and homeless people. I say people because they appeared to be very equal opportunity with who they’d infected with the Accursed Disease of lycanthropy...
While there is such a thing as a Good lycanthrope, wererats are generally not a part of that crowd. The Good Lycanthropes are generally the werebears, the Neutrals are the werecrocs/gators and wereraptors, that's the bird of prey-type raptors, not Jurassic Park-type. Nearly every other kind of lycanthrope was just downright Evil.
That’s your wererats, werewolves, weretigers/cats, werebats, and wereboars for the most part. All of those kinds of lycanthropy pretty much turn even Good people to Evil given enough time for the Curse to work on them. Unfortunately, at least for my current situation, it's not impossible for an individual to beat the lycanthrope Curse’s ability to corrupt you to its alignment.
Just really close to it.
Why do I say that it’s unfortunate, then? That’s actually simple. My conscience and tactics are why. When all of your opponents are simply Evil, like the necromancer and its undead slaves earlier, going off on them is really easy to do. I didn’t have to deal with any moral quandaries when fighting that kind of enemy!
The Federovs had been easy for me to justify going off on, too, considering what I KNEW they had done.
Things get a lot more complicated for me without that assurance. Could Chris and I simply kill all of these wererats? Maybe? Probably?
Could I justify doing so morally when there’s any chance at all that one of them was forcibly changed and managed to keep hold of a core of decency, or morality, instead of being converted to Evil by the lycanthropic Curse?
‘No. No, I can’t, dammit! Shit, this is gonna be a pain in the ass!’ Luckily, I had no qualms about defending myself, no matter what axis of the Alignments they sat on. ‘Thank GOD I’m not a paladin! My own convoluted moral code is enough of a pain in my ass, I don’t need to be Oathbound to some god’s Creed!’
“Hey, guys. What’s up? Just hangin’ out on a Friday night with yer homies? You know, despite the fact that you summoned up this nice fog and seem to be bringing in more and more of your buddies as we speak?” I asked them.
Chris’s black Gothic mage armor engaged, as did his shield spell. I activated my mind armor and mind gauntlets, setting them to +1 Shifter Bane/Defiant and Nemesis/Evil again.
None of the wererats liked that at all.
“You two smelled funny, and one of my guys spotted ya when ya became visible after getting into mid-town, looking like ya got there in an awful hurry comin’ from the east. Then we get a report that someone ripped one of the Constable’s lil’ bitches a new asshole, so we thought we’d come see what you guys were all about.” said a big guy who seemed like he was probably the leader.
Him, and maybe five or six others, stood out from the rest who either looked like skatepunks or homeless people. These guys were bigger, looked a LOT tougher, and were wearing biker gang colors.
The speaker, himself, was even bigger than that! 6’7” tall and 350 pounds, most of which looked like muscle, too. He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt under black riding leathers and combat boots. He looked like he was in his late 30s or early 40s, with long hair in a ponytail going grey early, a goatee, and a serious five o’clock shadow.
I looked at Chris and he chuckled and shook his head before chiming in. “Wait. You mean to tell me that you heard that a necromancer and his pack of undead got ripped apart by two dudes and the first thing that went through your head was, ’Let's hunt them down and pick a fight with them!’ Are you kidding me?” he asked incredulously.
I chuckled at that.
The crowd had been pretty obviously working themselves up into a frenzy, but that was like a bucket of water poured on their heads.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Biker dude wasn’t happy that I had just dumped a bucket of ice water on his little rat pack’s morale. “Kickin’ the shit out of those wusses don’t mean shit!” he spat out.
“What if I kick the shit out of you, huh? Does that mean shit?” I asked him with a chuckle. Martial Lore was telling me from the way he moved the he was tough, but I doubted he was tougher than I was. Not only that, but Chris’s Argent Tide Combat Art was basically these guy’s kryptonite!
His eyes got really wide. I think he had expected me to be afraid. You know, massively outnumbered, surrounded by a pack of lycanthropes.
I was afraid, too, at least a little. But not of him. If all these things attacked at once, that would be a problem. Just him, though?
I was confident I could make him regret the recent life decisions that led him to this place and time.
I looked over at Chris. “Unless you want this dance?”
Chris snorted. “Nah, he’s all yours, tough guy!”
I looked back at the big biker wererat. “Well. What’s it gonna be? You gonna bitch out after talkin’ shit in front of your buddies?”
He snarled at me and began to hulk out. I let him, because the entire reason for fighting him was to make a point!
Normally, I am completely against the concept of allowing an enemy to complete their drawn-out transformation scene, or letting an enemy caster complete the ritual they’re working on, or letting a genetic abomination consume the last android it needs to eat to reach its ultimate form!
Unfortunately, in this case, the whole point of this was to intimidate the OTHER people here. If I didn’t let him finish changing, it might actually incite them again... and there were more than forty of them now!
Huh. His biker leathers must be the equivalent of enchanted armor... its changing size to fit him even though he’s the size of a rat mutate now! Damn! This guy is WAY more swole than the wererats I fought when I was Dreaming!
The now transformed wererat roared at me. I waved a hand in front of my nose. “Phewee! Bro, calm down – you seriously need a breath mint!”
He roared again and leaped at me this time.
Sidestep Charge kicked in, giving me +4 to my Dodge bonus and giving me an attack of opportunity if he missed... which he was kind enough to do. Hitting a 42 AC was not something in the cards for this guy, especially since Martial Lore was telling me he had a total attack bonus in the range of +12 or maybe +13.
That was actually pretty damned good. Just not good enough!
I calmly sidestepped his charging leap and slammed a kick with a lot more force than he was prepared for into his floating ribs for 10d6+37 points of damage.
He uh, he didn’t like that very much. How did I know? The audible sound of his ribs breaking and the huge scorch mark from the lightning damage on that side of his body made it pretty clear.
I stepped up beside him and used my Legsweep maneuver from Broken Chains, boosting it with Bronze Knuckle. As a free action, when I used a maneuver, I spent a point of Pneuma to activate my Air glyph setting it to buff Chris and myself.
He was already off balance from completely missing me and getting the shit kicked out of his ribs, so when I stepped in and swept his legs out from under him, he was on the ground before he knew what was happening.
Great Throw lets me do my unarmed damage whenever I trip someone, this time with +3d6 more damage from the Air glyph and Bronze Knuckle. The Broken Chains Legsweep lets me make an immediate attack roll if the trip attack succeeds, which also hit.
Then, of course, he was flat on the ground and Wide Open for a Vicious Stomp.
I intentionally missed with it, this time triggering a Halo Strike bringing the total damage up to 16d6+32, which landed on the concrete right next to his head and stomped a two-foot-deep crater into the ground and broke a few windows in surrounding buildings.
I stared down at him... that would have been a bit over 300 points of damage in one round! I did somewhere in the region of 230 or 240 points of damage to him in about five or six seconds.
“Shall we call it a draw?” I asked the biker rat.
“What?” he gasped and wheezed out, through very obviously broken ribs.
“I said, shall we call this fight a draw?” I repeated.
“Why? Why would you do that?” he groaned out through clenched teeth.
“I’ll be honest with you, as far as I know, you wererats are all Evil as fuck, but you also have some kind of a sense of honor, in other words, you guys are Lawful Evil, from what I know. I don’t really wanna fight forty or fifty of you. I’m pretty sure I’d win, but there’s no way my buddy and I get out of here unhurt. Therefore, we should call this a draw, you should go get some medical treatment, and me and my friend here will get the fuck out of town, like we were planning before you guys showed up.”
I was hoping this guy would be a good sport about this. Lycanthropes all generally have some small amount of fast healing, which becomes full-blown regeneration under a full moon. It would take him maybe a half an hour to recover from this beatdown, after which everything but his rep would be fine.
If he decided to get frisky, that was fine, too. Offering mercy to defeated foes is one of the nicer parts of being on Team Good Guy. He was probably Evil, but nothing he had done here WAS Evil. It wasn’t particularly nice or Good, either, but it wasn’t Evil. The Federovs had started a war with me. The Necro Cowboy not only WAS obviously Evil, but he had DONE Evil by creating and controlling that pack of ghouls and ghasts...
These guys were probably Evil, but killing people just for their Alignment is messed up. Until the wererats gave me a reason to kill them, I’d try to be merciful. It wasn’t likely they were redeemable, but I didn’t KNOW it was impossible for them to change. So, I’d give them a chance!
Having a +16 Diplomacy check to back it up didn’t hurt my confidence when I offered it, either.
I offered him my hand to help him up. He took it, and looked surprised when I was able to help all eight or nine hundred pounds of him to his feet! My 20 Strength will let me pick 400 pounds up over my head pretty easily... and I can pick up and move twice that. It lets you drag five times that much!
He was probably stronger than me, but this was a pure power move on my part.
He stood there and stared at me for a second. “You’re one loco pendejo! Haha! I think I like you, Luchador de Oro!” he smacked me on the shoulder a couple of times. “I’m the Big Cheese around here.” he said, and all of his wererats chuckled at his very lame joke. “You need something, or you need to get in touch with me, just ask around for Maxwell.”
Yeah, he was damned strong... but his naming sense SUCKED.
Chris was staying vigilant, which made me feel a bit more confident.
“Ok. Got it. I might take you up on that. You guys take it easy, then. Let’s go, Grimdark Guy.” I said to Chris and heading north.
-----------------
“Did you get a good shot of their faces?” the big wererat who just got his ass kicked asked.
The half a dozen or so people that had remained hidden shook their heads. “Sorry, boss. They had some kind of blurring effect up. Enchantment? We’re not sure. They just show up as blurs of color on video and even Polaroid.”
The self-titled Big Cheese sighed. “Damn. It's probably a good thing, anyway. I don’t think we want to mess with those guys.” He looked over at his head shaman. “Did you get a read on them?”
The middle-aged woman in biker leathers nodded. “Yeah, Maxwell, I did. They’re both really weird, boss. Both are solidly Good, but no trace of a Virtue or a Sin on ‘em anywhere. Needless to say, that’s really weird for a Metahuman, and they were both Metas, 100%. Only elites from one of the big organizations get as strong as those two are, unless someone gets really lucky with a Pact or something... and all of the big organizations try to weed out Good people as early as they can.”
“Yeah, that Luchador de Oro... his powers feel a lot like some of the Templars I’ve run into. They pretend to be Good, and a few of them even are, but then what the hell are they doing at a bar being run as a one-stop snack shop for vampires? That other guy... what the hell was even up with him? I felt mana off of him like a lot of casters I’ve seen but his sword felt like it was radiating an aura of Silver Qi or something?” he looked confused.
The shaman just shook her head. “He was some kind of an arcane magic user, but he was weird, too. I felt the purest arcane magic I think I’ve ever felt off of someone, but he was also exuding a strong elemental Fire aura AND a Qi aura of silver, somehow? I hate to say this, but I think not fighting them was a good idea. The guy with the gold aura wasn’t lying when he told you they could take us all.”
The Big Cheese looked annoyed at that. “Great. Another asshole that thinks he can push us around.”
The shaman poked him in the chest. “That’s NOT what I said or meant! The two of them took out Morden and his pack in under two minutes! If he’d wanted to fuck with us, he could have easily killed you! Did you even notice that every time he hit you, each hit was stronger than the last?”
Maxwell’s eyes narrowed. “They were, weren’t they? What the hell was that bullshit he was talking about with Evil and Lawful Evil bullcrap?”
The shaman nodded and continued what she was saying. “Yeah, that’s right, the hits were harder each time. That last hit that he missed on purpose was EASILY the strongest of them all, and you were flat on your back! He could have crushed your skull like an egg. Plus, he’s probably Virtuous, you fool! He means what he says and will do what he says as long as we keep our side of a deal you big moron! As far as him talking about Evil and Lawful Evil, I’ve heard that kind of thing from two groups of people; people who play RPGs or people who are either Pacters and Spiritbound, usually when they’re talking about Virtuebound and Sinbound.”
Max looked surprised for a second. “Huh. Yeah. It's easy to forget there are people out there like that, isn’t it? So, he either thinks he’s in a role-playing game or he knows stuff that we don’t.” he said, glancing off into the distance, thoughtfully.
The Big Cheese clapped his hands, only wincing a little, his fast healing having already dealt with a decent chunk of the damage he’d taken. “Ok. We may not have gotten what we came here for, but maybe we got something better. Put out the word not to mess with those two unless someone REALLY makes it worth our while! Take what we’ve got to the Constable, see what we can get for it. Let’s move people!”
The wererat Clan of Portland, ‘Rats in a Maze’, also known as PRiaM, dispersed, going back to doing what they were good at; sneaking, gathering info, stabbing people occasionally for money, and making alchemical concoctions for all kinds of fun and games.