Ace breathed in the crisp air. It settled in her lungs, burned a bit with coldness, then steamed out from her open mouth. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been down here, which was her own fault honestly since she could have checked the time along with her stats. It was too late at this point. Her time was better spent on rubbing her goose-fleshed skin and moving her legs to make sure they didn’t fall asleep.
“Boooring,” she yawned, taking the time to crack her neck. “Hey, MS5! How long were you down here anyway?”
Her friend’s voice reverberated off the walls and echoed to her.
“I’m not sure, but you should have gotten your first mutation by now. Or maybe in the next few minutes?”
Ace opened her mouth to say that nothing had happened yet and a phrase popped into existence above her. She groaned.
*Mutation Added: Prey Scent*
“That doesn’t sound good.”
She tapped her temple twice and opened up her stats.
3 Physical Mutations in Play: Horned, Element Sensitivity (Cold), Prey Scent.
3 Spiritual Mutations in Play: Resonance, Raging Blood, Last Words
She selected Prey Scent.
- Prey Scent: Your body emits a pheromone that attracts hungry predators. The chances of you being attacked by wild animals and beastial beings is now 5%.
“Well, fuck me.” She let her head hit against the cave wall. The brief flicker of pain barely registered. The cold was worse, to be honest.
“Got one?”
“Yeah,” Ace yelled back. “Kinda shitty though. I smell like prey.”
There was a few minutes of hesitation.
“Well, at least your job isn’t being a hunter?”
Ace erupted in laughter, holding her sides as they began to ache.
“MS, you’ve got no imagination! Luring in predators would be a bonus... I mean, think about it! I could make money hunting down a man-eating beast. Need to find a child-stealing creature? I’m the woman to ask! I’d have a better chance of them attacking me, and thus finding them, than anyone else would. Hmm… maybe I’ll change classes after testing. Even starting over I’ll have more skills than the noobs.”
MS5 didn’t respond to that thought, so Ace killed time by flipping through her other mutations.
- Horned: no matter your gender, you’ve gained two circular ram’s horns on your head. These can help you break things and defend against attacks by most creatures. Unlike antlers, these will not fall off nor regrow.
- Element Sensitivity (Cold): your body takes longer to warm up and move. Cold bothers you more than most folk, and if you remain in a cold area without consistently warming up there is a higher chance of developing frostbite and needing to remove the affected limb.
- Resonance: two of your CORPSE stats were switched, and as they were the same number they each increased by 1.
- Raging Blood: for the first time you’re hit in combat, you have a 25% chance of going into a rage and landing a heavier blow on your attacker.
- Last Words: your body will have the last say in the argument that killed you by exploding five minutes after death. Anyone in range will need to deal with mental damage due to body horror and physical damage due to body shrapnel.
As an aside, she checked the time. 4:32 pm. And there weren’t any new messages from Kay to read either.
“Kinda wish I’d brought a book,” Ace grumbled, sighing loudly again. “That and a light would have at least given me something to do.” She shifted on the ground, hoping to find a more comfy position and not expecting much luck in that department. “Hey, MS. What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing much really.” There was a pause. “Did you hear something?”
“From here? No.” She didn’t say anything more than that, and with MS5 quiet as well, she could hear... well, nothing. No bats flapping, no bears growling, no people talking. Must be the paranoia talking. “So, have you found anyone here you wanna fuck?”
“ACE!” The outraged voice came closer and looking up there was a darker blob of motion near the edge. “You know I don’t do that!”
She did know. Remembered even. But if there was a surefire way of starting a conversation with MS5, it was to argue about something. Usually about sexual freedom or what should/shouldn’t be allowed in modern games.
“I know, and I think you should take advantage of it.” Ace shrugged. “Most virtual worlds don’t have diseases and any kids you have are completely NPCs, which means you can order them around. If the game lets you be pregnant.”
“Jinn.” There was a sigh. “Ace. Come on. We’ve talked about this over and over and over again. I have a husband. I’m happy having a husband. I don’t want anyone else but him. You’re welcome to do... whatever with whomever, but leave me out of it.” There was a pause.
"So I shouldn’t tell you about my sexy and steamy nights with Saul over at Briny Breeze?” Ace snickered as MS5 groaned. “Fine, fine, I’ll drop the topic. You pick the subject then.”
“I think…” The words were followed with several minutes of hesitation, and just as Ace went to prod MS5 again, they started talking. “I think I want to take you to my little fishing village. The people there are nice, there’s lots of ocean, and plenty of seafood to eat. Is Briny Breeze on the coast?”
“No.” Ace’s voice was short and curt. That had been one of the things she’d wanted and had been more than a little annoyed with when she had realized the town was several miles from the ocean. All the fun of being hit by hurricanes without the hindrances of watching the sun dip below the horizon, or seeing dolphins play in the distance. Yay.
“Then we’ll go to my place.” Their voice was firm on that, hardened with a familiar tone of steel that was not to be argued with. “After this.”
Ace acquiesced.
“Fine.”
The two of them then went silent, burrowing into their separate thoughts.
*Mutation Added: Bristles*
“Oooh, I’ve got my next one!” Ace watched in fascination as minuscule bristles emerged from her skin. The sensation was fuzzy prickling, like biting into a kiwi with the skin on. “Whoa. Gotta admit, I kinda like this already.”
“What did you get?”
“Let me check."
- Bristles: thousands of very tiny and almost unseen hairs give you the ability to feel small changes in vibrations in the air and ground around you. There is a limit to this sense’s range, though further mutations can enlarge or shrink the limitation.
“Huh. I can sense movement... hey, MS5! Through a rock towards me.” There was a whistling noise, then a yelp echoed about the cave. “Towards me dammit, not at me.”
“Sorry! It’s hard to see.”
“I’m sure,” Ace said dryly, getting to her feet and pacing around the small hole. It was too cold for her to sit, and after re-reading Element Sensitivity she was a bit worried about how her body was reacting to the cave. “Okay, try again. Try tossing it at my feet.”
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Ace closed her eyes and waited to hear the clatter. Sure enough, if she concentrated, there was a small section of her brain that tingled with anticipation in the few seconds before something.
“Can you throw a few more?” She waited as MS5 retrieved a few more rocks, and this time she tried to catch them as they rained down. The results helped her figure out how to understand the signals she was feeling and left bleeding lines across her hands. She rubbed them against her shirt until they stopped feeling slippery. The neatest part was that at the very edge of her range, she could visualize an air pattern that looked to be breathing, and which she was pretty sure was MS5. Ninety percent sure. If not, it could only belong to a ghost. Which was a weird thought, being able to sense dead people.
“Do I need to go get more stones? Or are you done with playing doge rocks?”
“Nah, no need,” Ace called up. “Figured it out for the most part. Just waiting for the next mutation to show up.”
“Good. Um… I know you probably don’t hear anything, but..." MS5’s voice trailed off, then came back softer than before. Small. “I think we’re not alone.”
Ace immediately tried to use her new mutation, but she didn’t sense a damned thing.
“Right,” she muttered to herself, rolling her eyes. “Biiiiig grain of salt.”
She raised her voice.
“Why do you think someone else is here?”
MS5 let out a noncommittal noise.
“Come on, give me some evidence MS.” Ace stood waiting, quietly wondering if there actually was any. She rocked from heel to toe, choosing that action over tapping her foot and sounding passive-aggressive. That mistake had been made years before and she still remembered the consequences.
“Well... I heard something. Like rocks hitting the ground.”
Ace counted to ten, then lifted her head up.
“Like the ones I had you thrown down to me? Those rocks?”
MS5 didn’t answer.
“I only need a few more mutations and then we’ll be outta here,” promised Ace.
“I would have sworn I heard something. Really.”
“You did. Us.”
Ace went back to pacing around the hole, swiping up a few of the stones and throwing them around to practice with. Four more, if one of them qualified as mental. She groaned at the idea of not getting what she needed and having to stay in this hole even longer.
“Ace? I heard something again.”
“I made a noise!” she yelled up, biting her tongue afterward so she didn’t release words she’d regret later. “Drink some of the beer or something, that should take your mind off things.”
It was quiet for a few minutes, then came the tell-tale pop of a can being opened.
“That’ll keep them from jumping at shadows,” she said, making sure to keep her voice down.
*Mutation Added: Forgetfulness*
“Shit. Just what I fucking need, something with no silver lining in it at all.” Ace opened up her stats again.
3 Physical Mutations in Play: Horned, Element Sensitivity (Cold), Prey Scent.
3 Spiritual Mutation in Play: Resonance, Raging Blood, Last Words
1 Mental Mutation in Play: Forgetfulness
- Forgetfulness: when you perform a task that requires more than three steps or needs specialized knowledge that is not written down, there is a chance that you will fail in your task.
“Dammit!” Ace picked up one of the loose rocks and threw it, full force, at the wall. It bounced back at her, but thanks to her mutation she was able to doge the ricochet.
“What’s wrong?!” yelled MS5, their head poking over the edge again.
“Got a shitty mutation. I’m gonna be forgetting a lot more stuff from here on out… more so than usual.”
“... that sounds mental though, so at least you have that?”
Ace pulled up the stats again, her smile widening as she saw that MS5 was right. She had just gained her first mental mutation.
“Fuck YES!” she shouted, pumping her fist in the air and doing a little dance.
“Ace?”
“Yeah?”
“There were noises again.”
Ace sighed and reached out with her vibration sensor. Her breathing, MS5’s breathing, and footsteps... shit.
“Get your weapon out now!” Ace yelled, touching the wall around her to figure out where the damned handholds had gone. Fuck fuck fuck it hadn’t been just paranoia! “Front face—”
A scream rippled in the room. Her blood boiled.
“NO! Let me go!”
Ace concentrated on the vibrations in the air. Comparing them against when it had only been MS5 up there, there were at least two more bodies.
“Who else is here?”
She froze. A torch grew closer and light from the flame spilled over the edge. Her eyes narrowed at the brightness.
“What the fuck...? Hey, Caesar, there’s someone in the hole!”
Caesar? It had to be another one of the testers, but Ace didn’t know that name off the top of her head.
“Listen up. Climb out nice and slow.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve got your friend.”
She couldn’t argue that. The vibrations she sensed had MS5 being held by someone else, and who knew how many others were outside her range?
“Fine.” Ace made sure her voice sounded defeated and compliant. “Just let me find how to get back up out of here. It’s dark, so I don’t know where I need to climb up.”
She ignored whatever he said next, concentrating on finding the fucking handholds and trying to figure out how long she needed to stay here to pick up the other three mutations. Ace found the first hole and began to climb upwards. She might be able to get one before leaving the pit, but that wouldn’t let her reach her goal.
Fucking assholes. This was ripping apart her plans. One hand brushed the floor and as she reached out she saw that familiar message.
*Mutation Added: Venomous Fangs*
Ace felt a hint of movement behind her eyes, pressure without pain.
- Venomous Fangs: you now have fangs attached to your jaw by a hinge, which means they fold up against the roof of your mouth when not in use. Venom sacs have been placed behind your eyes and your first bite is the most dangerous, with continuing bites eventually running out of venom.
“Yesssss,” Ace deliberately hissed, smiling and running her tongue over the roof of her mouth. Now, this was a mutation she would enjoy.
“Get the fuck up here!”
Her free hand was grabbed and she was dragged out. Ace clenched her jaw instead of cursing the bastard out. As much as she wanted to sink her new fangs into this person’s muscular arms, she needed a proper plan. First, be fully out of the hole before she broke a leg. Second, figure out how many there were. Third, get MS5 to help even if all they did was distract the enemy. And finally, take down as many as possible.
“Fuck off!” she snapped. Now that she wasn’t afraid of falling into the pit, she writhed and rolled on the ground, trying to get away from the hands. Instead of freeing herself, someone else came and grabbed her feet. The two of them lifted her off the ground and tossed into the corner next to MS5. She groaned. The cave wall had introduced itself rather rudely to her hip.
“A little respect would go a long way,” drawled a deep voice. “Huh. Hey Jinn. Didn’t expect to see you here.”
Jinn squinted at him. Long brown hair. Slender body covered in corded muscle. Round eyes with a distinct curve to them. Wearing a t-shirt and jeans, both of them covered in blood and dust. Not a hint of recognition.
“It’s me. LMFS.”
Last Mother Fucker Standing. Jinn felt that squeaky sensation in her bones as her teeth ground together in anger at being caught by this prick, and if she was being honest with herself, a roll of fear went through her. He’d gotten his name early in his career by straight-up murdering the other testers in the games he could, and there was no reason to believe he wasn’t aiming to do that in OMR.
“Nice to see you.” She forced out. “Let us go.”
He laughed, two other voices joining in. Ace tried to see where the other people were, but his hand wrapped around her chin and forced her to look at him.
“Funny.” LMFS turned to the left. “You guys hear that? Want us to ‘let them go.’ That hole’ll be fine, right? Let ‘em go and die there.”
Ace felt the sick clenching in her stomach start to grow. He was going to kill them.
“Why the hell,” he said, turning to face her again, “are the two of you in here anyhow? Shouldn’t you be off, I dunno, crawling around cities and dealing with stupid NPCs?”
“Ace—”
“None of your damn business,” said Ace, shouting to cover up MS5’s voice. An enemy without knowledge was better than one with, no matter how small or insignificant the piece of information was. “What do you want with us?”
“I’m on my last mission.” He squatted down next to her, tousling her hair. “Need to capture a few more people, cut out their hearts. Got a fun goal called Heartbreaker that’s almost done.”
“... what fucking path did you choose? Psycho?”
“Warlord,” he said, looking away from Ace and at MS5. “Not sure about you guys though. You look like a witch, and fuck if I know what she is.” He gestured at Ace and that was the moment. She snatched his left hand, opened her mouth wide, and bit down deep into his flesh. The taste of his blood was overpowering, and though she didn’t let go she gagged, stomach roiling.
“FUCK!”
Ace fell to the ground, the left side of her face burning from the punch he’d landed. There was an ache from her mouth, and a small bit of exploration with her tongue found that one of her fangs was broken.
“Shouldn’t have fuckin’ bothered to talk to you.” LMFS gripped his hand and held it close to his chest. Spat on the ground. “Should have just shot and taken a knife to your chests. Been done with it.”
Ace looked around her. His followers were reaching for their weapons, ready to defend him. Three against two. She rocked back onto her feet and charged forward, hitting LMFS with her horns. The loud crack made when she hit temporarily deafened her, but it was worth the headache to see him go downward. Then she kicked him between the legs, feeling justified as he screamed and vomited. Thunder echoed in the cave. Her arm felt itchy; a quick check showed that the bullet had sliced open a wound on her arm.
“Two on two,” she said, turning to face the others. MS5 had taken advantage of the situation to grab the backpack and was rifling through it. “You assholes wanna fuckin’ try me?”