Chapter 100

Evil Panda

Team one blurred in, moving too fast for Leo to see. Showering Evil Panda with fire, lightning, and even some kind of ice bolt. Team one had spent the last week leveling up, and it showed.

Gretchen flew away so fast it was like she'd vanished. One second she was standing in front of the monster, the next she was gone.

The snipers opened fire, aiming for the tentacles holding—was it seventeen children now?

Evil Panda let out an unearthly scream and lashed out, tentacles moving so fast they continually broke the sound barrier.

As Leo's time freeze skill kicked in, the bullets moved slowly enough for him to see. A few hit Evil Panda's tentacles, severing them. Most did not.

Team two flew in, Liam among them, doing their best to rescue the children. Liam grabbed a child, dragging the severed tentacle still wrapped around the child's neck, and tried to fly away. A second tentacle came out of nowhere, slamming Liam hard enough to cause Liam and the child to go separate ways and send Liam crashing to the asphalt parking lot fifty feet away. Liam didn't move.

A few rescuers were successful. Most were not. Evil Panda was too strong and fast. Bodies of wounded and dying implant wearers decorated the ground.

Team One's attacks destroyed the monster's panda costume, exposing the giant squid-like form underneath, but unfortunately did little to hurt the monster.

Next to Leo, Jason carefully loaded a special rifle with a syringe dart filled with Mr. Al's hallucinogens and fired. Thanks to their time dilation skills, the syringe dart appeared to fly slowly, arcing toward the monster, only to be smacked from the air by one of the monster's many tentacles.

Leo saw a child, maybe six, running from the monster, using the confusion to get away. “Jason!” he shouted. “Shoot that kid with the drug!”

“Are you crazy?” Jason said, his voice oddly slow due to the difference in their time-dilation skills. “That will kill him.”

“It's the only way. The kid's already dead! Shoot him! Or give me the rifle. I'll do it!”

“You'd miss,” Jason said, looking down at the battle as the monster's tentacles knocked more and more flying defenders from the sky. Looking stricken, he pointed the rifle at the child and fired. The syringe hit the child in the belly. The child had just enough time to look up at them with a sad, accusing face before collapsing to the ground, unconscious and twitching.

A tentacle shot out, grabbed the kid, and pulled him into one of Evil Panda's mouths.

He was a happy, happy panda, and he just wanted to make friends and meet people. He liked people, and he wished they'd quit flying around trying to kill him...

Oh, wait... was that the sky? Wow. The sky was so beautiful, and the sun. Thanks to his new form, he could stare directly at the sun without worrying about his vision. Wow. The sun was so beautiful.

Francis Cockren/Evil Panda stared up at the sun, all his troubles forgotten.

Leo watched as Evil Panda, a giant monstrous squid without its costume, slowly stopped moving and settled down on the asphalt parking lot.

Silence and calm permeated the battlefield, with nothing but the groans of the wounded and a few crying children to break the silence.

Pastor 11:6: Leo. Group Heal now.

Leo responded to Gretchen's message and quickly cast Group Heal, ashamed he hadn't thought to do so already.

Pastor 11:6: Everyone who's not still in cool-down, get as close as you can to that thing and hit it with everything you've got. Now.

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Close to forty people, Gretchen and Trent included, flew, ran, walked, or staggered over to Evil Panda.

There was a long pause as they gathered their strength, and with a roar of flame and a shockwave Leo could feel from the top of the stadium, the implant wearers hit it with all their collective power.

Someone dropped Angie on top of the thing, where she hacked at it with all her flaming berserker sword strength.

Trent launched a fireball strong enough for Leo to feel from the top of the stadium, not to mention smell the Boss's monster-squid guts.

Gretchen pounded it with a kinetic weapon, hitting it many times a second, while others launched every imaginable attack.

Evil Panda sat there, not seeming to notice as large swaths of its skin melted off and it lost tentacles by the hundreds.

Pastor 11:6: Again!

They hit it again, though weaker this time.

Pastor 11:6: Again!

With a groan, they hit it a third time. Evil Panda slowly turned into a huge pile of squid guts.

Leo breathed a sigh of relief he hadn't realized he was holding, hating that he'd done so little while people were out there dying.

***

With a delegation of defenders and the wrath of God behind her, Gretchen glared at the snipers. “I saw what happened earlier. Which one of you shot a small child with Mr. Al's syringe dart?”

All eyes turned to Leo and Jason.

Jason just sat there, his head in his hands.

Leo stepped forward. “Jason did it on my orders. If you got a complaint, you take it up with me.”

Gretchen looked down at Leo, anguished. “You ordered your friend to kill a six-year-old child, Leo? Why?”

“The kid was already dead,” Leo responded. “I ordered Jason to get Mr. Al's drugs into the boy so Evil Panda would eat them. Kind of like covering a pill with hamburger, so the dog will take its medicine. It was the right call to make, and I'd do it again.”

Mr. Osmond stood next to Gretchen, looking (correctly) like he'd watched the entire battle from a safe distance, in direct contrast to the exhausted people surrounding him. “You believed Evil Panda would eat that child in the middle of a battle? What made you so sure?”

“There wasn't a doubt in my mind. High-Level Bosses are nervous eaters. I'm not sure why, they just are. How many of those kids did we save? Three?”

“Five,” Gretchen said. “One child is badly wounded.”

“I admit I was hoping that battle would go better,” Leo said. “If it wasn't for my actions, I'm not sure we could have killed Evil Panda at all, and the rescued kid count might have been zero. You still don't get how overpowered High-Level Bosses are. But we won. How about we use our Demon Tears to get stronger so we're better prepared the next time this happens. And let's get healers to help the wounded while we're at it. I'll cast another group heal.”

“Our healers are already working on it,” Gretchen said. “How about you think real hard about your previous life and tell us what else you remember happening in the next week? It would have been nice to have had some warning about what we just went through.”

Leo looked down. She was right. “I'm sorry. I remembered something happened today in my previous life, but it wasn't like other implant wearers talked to me, and I didn't realize it was a High-Level Boss.”

“What's done is done,” Gretchen said, looking exhausted. “Do you remember anything else happening before next week, when three of those things will show up? And was Evil Panda one of those three?”

“I don't know. I suspect Evil Panda was one of the three,” Leo responded, “and I don't think anything exciting happened before next week, but the way the time stream has been altered, I'd be prepared for anything.”

***

The rest of the day was spent rescuing the wounded and burying the dead. Among others, Paul Sanchez, Angie's friend, had been killed.

Angie, rather battered herself, was crying. Tears ran down her face. “I'm running out of friends.”

Liam survived but was banged up and had trouble moving around. Charlotte had several broken ribs. There were many wounded and dead.

The defenders used a tractor to push the High-Level Boss's body into a pit so it wouldn't attract vermin.

Future Man 10/16: Mr. Osmond, I hope you've been preparing.

Teach: Considering your plans, Leo, the less you know about mine, the better. Have you thought about my suggestion? I believe we can fake your death to throw any High-Level Bosses off your trail.

Future Man 10/16: You know I can't do that. Do you need any you know what?...

Teach: Yes.

Future Man 10/16: I'm scared.

Teach: Me too.