Chapter 113
The Aliens
And Leo died...
Again.
***
The next thing Leo knew, he was in a large room. He took a deep breath. He'd died for a second time. This whole dying thing sucked. But where was he now?
Looking around the pleasant living area with a fountain and the smell of plants, but no walls. In the distance, he could see nothingness that gave him chills.
Nearby an old man was surrounded by--well, if they weren't large demons, they were wearing very convincing costumes.
Leo might have gone to the old man's aid, but the demons appeared to be congratulating him.
“You did such an amazing job, Supreme Counselor, sir. It's an honor to be in the same room with you,” said a large, unpleasant-looking, horned demon with red, greasy skin, shaking the old man's hand with a large, clawed one.
Three adults rushed over to hug Leo. “Leo! You're so young!” squealed a middle-aged woman.
“Oh, my god, Leo! What the fuck is going on here?” said the smallest of the three.
“I believe we're dead,” said the squealer. “And though we died at different times, we're all together now. The question is, why, and what happens next?”
Leo took a second look at the three. The small woman had to be an older Angie. That meant the other two were...
A huge smile broke out on Leo's face. “You didn't get killed in that fire!” Leo shouted. “You grew up!” He hugged them back. “Jason, Angie, and Charlotte! Oh, my god! The old man is?”
“Mr. Osmond, the bastard,” (the squealer), Charlotte said. “He got old. That is, older than we did.”
She broke away from the other three. “Mr. Osmond! Did we get them?”
Mr. Osmond politely disengaged himself from the fawning demons. He stood at attention and saluted Charlotte. “You did good, Charlotte.” A tear rolled down the man's face. “The moon looked different when we were finished, but we got the bastards. We killed them all.”
“So they're aliens?” Leo asked, motioning to the fawning demons and several angelic-looking beings, complete with white robes, ornamental wings, and halos, standing off to the side, looking very unhappy.
Jason looked over at Angie. “My implant doesn't work. Does yours?”
Angie shook her head. “Too bad. I'd love to kill those bastards, but my implant isn't functioning either.”
Mr. Osmond turned to Angie and Jason, glaring at them. “You idiots! I told you to wait for Lydia! When you attack something in the ocean, you bring a water mage. It's not rocket science, it's basic common sense! Something the two of you are lacking.”
“I'm with him on this one,” Charlotte said. “If you'd waited fifteen minutes for Lydia, you wouldn't have died in that attack. We both spent years grieving your deaths.”
“You always told us to wait, and nothing ever happened,” Angie protested. “We thought it was just one Boss at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But it turned out to be three Bosses clustered together, all completely insane from their diet of deep-sea creatures.”
“I tried to take out the Bosses,” Jason said to Angie, “but I couldn't. I saw you go down, and I died seconds later.”
Angie glared at Jason. “I told you to run away.”
“That's not how we roll, Angie. We live as a team, we die as a team.”
Mr. Osmond turned back to the demons. “After we took down the Boss's moon colony, our implants informed us we'd killed off all the human-eating monsters and won the game. Then nothing. We waited for the promised valuable prizes. Or anything--But nothing.”
“Well, sir,” the large unpleasant-looking demon said. “The prizes are given out after you live out your natural lifespan in this time stream.”
One of the angelic beings glared at the demons. “You cheated. Leo wasn't supposed to receive a Guardian class option. I'm complaining to Central Control.”
“You're always complaining to Central Control,” the unpleasant-looking demon responded. “Anyway, we had nothing to do with Leo receiving the Guardian class option, and you cheated with the Guardian 5191 warning. We were well within our rights getting Leo out of the agency prison at that point.”
The angels glared at Leo. “You were supposed to support Guardian Abdul Aziz. It was common knowledge that if he and his followers had won their great battle, it could have turned the tide of the war. That's why we issued the warning to prevent that.”
“Common knowledge to who?” Leo protested. “I knew of that Guardian, but I also knew he got his ass handed to him in my first life. It didn't make sense that you'd warn your people about a battle we'd lost.”
Charlotte spoke up. “Am I correct in assuming the angel aliens are on the side of the monsters, while the demon aliens were on the side of the humans?”
The unpleasant-looking demon stepped forward. “You are. The angels play the bad guys who came to your world to sell humans Bio-Blessed. And like any intelligent bad guy, they take the form of your symbol of goodness, or angels, to hide their activities behind your religious orders. Our group took the form of the bad guys, or demons, passing out implants and secretly working on the side of humans.”
“Are all of you the same species of alien, or different?” Leo asked.
“It would be most accurate to say we all belong to the same group of aliens,” the demon responded. “We're several species, but that has little to do with the sides we took in this game.”
“So that's all our suffering was to you, a game?” Charlotte said.
“It wasn't real,” the head angel said. “We rewind the clock, so nothing happened.”
“It sure felt real, you piece of shit!” Charlotte snapped.
The head demon cleared his throat. “At the beginning, I admit we were not thrilled with our chances when we learned that the last surviving pre-Change implant wearer, Leo Edwards, wasn't particularly accomplished, or intelligent. And Leo's performance of getting himself killed within the first two months of the war was unimpressive. The odds were badly against us, and we'd lost all hope of victory. But then Supreme Counselor Oliver Osmond single-handedly turned the tide of the war!”
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“Supreme Counselor?” Leo asked.
Very-old Mr. Osmond smiled at Leo, looking sad. “When you've been around as long as I have, people throw titles at you. They don't mean anything. When I observed you through your senses in monster prison, I wished I could have told you we were alive, but I didn't dare. If your captors had found out, it would have cost us our lives, and I couldn't take that chance. I faked the deaths of every one of your friends and allies to convince you, and consequently, the Bosses, that we'd lost the war. I'm so sorry to put you through that. You understand, don't you?”
Leo nodded, a big smile on his face. “I'm just glad you guys and my sister survived. What happened to Lydia, by the way?”
“She was fine the last I'd heard, Leo,” Mr. Osmond replied. “I loved her like a daughter, but after the war, we had some philosophical differences and parted ways.”
“What philosophical differences?” Leo asked.
“How did you die, Mr. Osmond?” Charlotte asked. “Was it old age?”
“I don't believe so,” Mr. Osmond said. “I didn't realize it at the time, but I believe one of my slaves assassinated me.”
“Slaves?” the other four said at the same time.
“What the fuck?” Angie said.
“Poor wording. My apologies,” Mr. Osmond responded. “Language changed a lot in three hundred years. I meant 'subjects'. There was evidence of revolutionary activities, but I mistakenly believed my own subjects were loyal.”
“Let me guess,” Charlotte said. “Your subjects didn't have implants, did they? I could see things moving in that direction during my life. It would seem they got a lot worse.”
Mr. Osmond sniffed. “That's just how things were in the twenty-fourth century. Those who didn't have an implant served those who did. Implants don't provide immortality, but they do prolong lives. I was three hundred and fifty-two years old when I was assassinated.”
“So what happened with Lydia?” Leo asked.
“She was pretty miserable when you got killed, Leo,” Charlotte said. “But she took an implant and eventually became a water mage. She could do things with water you wouldn't believe.”
“Here's something you might enjoy, Leo,” Jason said. “You remember Brick? Well, Brick had this story about you he'd tell everyone. 'Before I got on the bus,' Brick would say, 'Leo whispered something in my ear. He said, if you ever mess with my sister, I'll kill you in ways that make brave men shit their pants.' Then Brick would laugh. He loved telling that story.”
“So did he?” Leo asked. “Did he mess with my sister?”
“He wouldn't dare,” Angie said.
“Brick was always a bit of a prick,” Jason said. “But he was nice to your sister. He felt a connection to her since neither of them had any family left.”
“He became an earth mage, right?” Angie asked.
“Not sure what happened to him,” Charlotte said. “Kind of lost track after the first couple of decades.”
The head demon loudly cleared his throat. “I'm sure all of you are wondering what you're doing here. You should know it is rare that we provide this personal service to players. Most winning players appear in front of a virtual computer monitor, but in light of Supreme Counselor Oliver Osmond's amazing accomplishments, we made an exception for him and his group. Your implants promised you valuable prizes if you won the game, and we're here to deliver. We will start with Leo Edwards.”
The demon waved his scaly-clawed hand, and a scoreboard appeared out of nowhere. “Leo Edwards was the last surviving pre-Change implant wearer of the previous timeline,” the demon continued. “And for that, he gets a sixty-million-dollar bonus. Now, if any of you want, you can request this dollar equivalent in other forms of currency, such as gold, jewels, or cryptocurrency, though I strongly recommend against the latter.”
“You are not supposed to give them financial advice,” the head angel snapped.
“Oh, settle down,” the demon responded. “Who would have thought angels would be such poor losers?” The angels glared at the demons but remained silent.
“Unfortunately,” the demon continued. “Leo failed to do much of anything else of note. During both of his lives, he killed twelve of what you call Low-Level Bosses, and assisted in the killing of fifty-eight more Low-Level Bosses and three High-Level Bosses. This gets Leo an additional eight million. We will round this up to 10 million, making for a rather small sum of 70 million dollars.”
Leo's name appeared on the scoreboard with 70 million dollars next to it.
“Wait,” Angie choked out. “First of all, I don't agree with your assessment of Leo. Leo became a martyr and inspired a lot of people with his courage and sacrifice. Second, you're saying Leo only gets 70 million dollars?”
“Correct,” the demon responded. “Leo only gets 70 million dollars.”
Mr. Osmond cleared his throat. “Before we continue, I would like to point out that Leo's plan worked much better than I anticipated. After Leo's death, the Boss alliances fell apart and they devolved into small groups fighting for territory, giving us humans the chance to raise our armies in peace. I don't think your assessment of Leo's contribution is accurate.”
“I'm sorry you feel that way,” the demon responded, “but Leo didn't do much before he died a second time, and being a martyr doesn't count. Next, Jason Young, far more impressive, single-handedly killed hundreds of Low-Level Bosses, and assisted in killing thousands of Low-Level Bosses and over a thousand High-Level Bosses. He gets 520 million dollars.”
The name Jason Young and his reward appeared on the scoreboard over Leo Edward's.
“That's a lot of money,” Leo said, a little envious, but happy for his friend.
“Angie Hernandez's score is similar to Jason Young's because they worked as a team. But, because she was fighting monsters in the front, while Jason provided fire support, her contributions are rated more highly. She gets 798 million dollars. A number we'll round up to 800 million.”
Her name and score appeared over the other two.
“Yes!” Angie cheered. “That's over a billion between the two of us!” She and Jason bumped fists.
“Now Charlotte Walker's quiet presence could be felt in every battle the previous two fought. In addition, she acquitted herself with such heroism in the final battle for the moon that she ranks as the tenth-highest scorer in the game. And consequently gets 5 billion dollars.”
Charlotte's name appeared above the other three.
“Shit,” Angie said. “What did you do to get 5 billion dollars?”
“I snuck onto the moon with a large bomb and planted it next to the colony reactor to take out the Bosses' moon colony,” Charlotte said. “We called it Operation Blow the Moon. A Boss discovered me right as I finished planting the bomb, so I set it off manually. That's how I died.”
Mr. Osmond stepped forward. “Charlotte's sacrifice weakened and disoriented the Bosses to the point where our elite Lightning Death Squad was able to move in and finish them off.”
“Lightning Death Squad?” Leo asked, suppressing a laugh. “I wonder where that name came from.”
“It's a gift,” Mr. Osmond chuckled and winked at Leo. “Names just come to me.”
“So you blew the moon,” Angie said.
“And I blew myself up doing so,” Charlotte responded. “Hazards of blowing the moon, I guess.”
“All I've ever blown is...”
Jason slugged Angie. “Stop it,” He looked over at Leo.
“Leo's an adult,” Angie responded.
“And last, but definitely not the least,” the demon continued, “Supreme Counselor Oliver Osmond. A man whose tireless support and planning saved countless implant wearers. A man who turned a disorganized mob into a mighty army that hunted down and slaughtered every monster in the solar system. As the top scorer in this game, I'm proud and honored to make you the grand prize winner and award you 500 billion dollars.”
Mr. Osmond's name appeared over the other four lit by flashing lights.
There was a loud coughing from Mr. Osmond. “Let me be sure I understand. When you say 500 billion, you are referring to pre-Change American dollars?”
“Of course, sir,” the demon responded. “And as I said earlier, if you wish for the equivalent value in gold or other currencies, we will be happy to do so.”
Mr. Osmond stared up at the scoreboard. “Is this money before or after taxes?”
“It's after,” the demon said. “We've made a special deal with your human governments to ensure all prize winner taxes have been paid in advance.”
“And now,” the demon cleared his throat nervously, “there is one small catch.”