The way back to Briny Breeze was nice. Small breezes cooled them off, birds sang pretty warnings as they ventured close to nests, and the sun itself must have decided that today was a good day to be a gentle type of warmth. Ace didn’t trust any of it. Neither did MS5.
“I still don’t understand what’s going on with the system,” they said, waiting patiently at the top of a small hill for Ace to limp her way up.
“I don’t get it either,” grunted Ace, struggling to ignore her worsening ankle and think about the few facts they’d been able to check. “Stuff like my staff still works.”
She wiggled it, not attempting to wave it around since it was currently being used as a cane.
“And our mutations are clearly working, but your health potions aren’t. Is it wrong to think those were deliberately targeted?”
“You said you were in touch with someone in customer service?”
“Yeah, Kay.” Ace’s eyes narrowed as she judged the remaining distance needed to join her friend. “Said there was something wrong. That I should alert them to any strange things I saw in-game. Wasn’t seeing anything as red flag as this shit is.”
“Can you contact them?”
Ace let out a bark of laughter.
“Not with the system down!”
“Yeah...” MS5 let out a broken laugh. “I kept forgetting we’re completely cut off.”
Jamming the end of the staff and pushing off put Ace up at the top of the hill with a groan.
“Really fucking wish... healing potions worked.” She panted for a few minutes, holding up a hand when MS5 asked about continuing. “Wait a sec. I don’t think we’re completely alone. If we’re here, there have to be other testers. Non-NPCs that have knowledge of coding and programming.”
“Who can figure out how to make it work again!” MS5 let out a whoop and Ace turned to look around them, making sure they hadn’t attracted unwanted attention.
“Maybe...” She didn’t think there was a way to do that, but hell, who was she to crush optimism? And just because she couldn’t do it didn’t mean that someone else was in the same shitty boat. Different people had different skills. “Look down there.” Ace pointed at the bottom of the hill where several thick trees cast their shadows over the pathway. “Did you see something?”
MS5 turned to look. For the next several minutes they both stared, and Ace was beginning to think she’d imagined movement, that the cause had been wind or an animal, but then MS5 stiffened.
“I do,” they said in a hoarse voice, a hand reaching out to clutch at Ace’s arm. “A little away from the road. There was a flash of light, that’s the only reason I saw it.”
Which most likely meant metal, and in turn, that probably meant a person. Whether it was an NPC or not was another story. It was too far from any settlement to be a friendly NPC, so with their luck it was going to be a bandit. Several of them. Armed well too. She let out a sigh.
“I’ll go down first and find out if it’s an attack.”
MS5 turned to her and shook their head.
“You’re already hurt, I’m not letting you walk into an ambush. Besides, it might just be someone out... gathering mushrooms or something.”
“You are an adult,” yelled Ace, her head throbbing even more. “How the hell are you this naive?!”
At the bottom of the hill, a person came out of the shadows and began waving their arms.
“I’m not naive,” snapped MS5, keeping their voice low. “I deliberately choose to look at the possible best thing that can happen.” Their voice lowered. “Especially since every five minutes or so every bit of my head is screaming at me that something bad’s going to happen. I’m working against that with everything I have.”
They watched the person keep waving, then start walking up the hill to them.
“Why are we waiting here?”
“Because they want to talk with us,” replied MS5. “We should listen.”
“Talk, or shoot? Cause that’s looking like the guy who ran out of the cave.” Ace squinted. “Yep. Same clothes.”
“...he did change his mind after LMFS revealed his inner nastiness.”
“No, he ran outta the cave so he didn’t get murdered. Not the same thing.”
Seconds ticked by and the distance between them closed. The breezes from before died down, and the birds either winged it somewhere else or decided to close their beaks and see what the stupid humans were going to do.
“If he tries to hurt us, I’m going to bite him,” warned Ace. Her tongue probed her fangs, happy that respawning had at least fixed her broken one. It hadn’t hurt like a toothache, but it had just… felt wrong.
“He won’t,” promised MS5.
“You know nothing about him.” Ace turned to them. “Hell, do you even know their name?”
“Which is why we’re going to wait right here and see what they have to say for themselves.”
Ace sighed, then stretched and cracked her neck. MS5 adjusted the shield so that it was firmly fastened around their arm. Finally, the man they were waiting for crested, breathing heavily as he looked to both of them. His long blonde hair was tied up into a basic ponytail and she would have chosen two words to describe his dress style: dead rocker. It fit perfectly too. His jeans were ripped at the knees, he had found a bandana from somewhere to tie around his head, and he was actually wearing a t-shirt that, if she squinted and connected the fraying pieces, came together to form a metallic guitar on the front.
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“You coulda... met me... halfway...” he wheezed. She took note of his all-black hiking boots. Not great to run in, perfect for kicking people though.
“Or we could make sure you don’t have the breath to hurt us.” Ace kept her eyes trained on him and clenched her hand tighter. “What do you want?”
Do you know why we’re still here?” He looked to both of their faces, but words weren’t needed. His shoulders slumped. “So, you don’t either.”
“What do you know?”
“Who are you?”
MS5 and Ace looked at each other as they both asked questions at the same time.
“Kris, first year of game testing.” He let out a shaky breath and a laugh. “Might be my last, to be honest. I don’t like this feeling of being trapped.”
Ace looked over him, trying to spot his mutations, but he looked like a regular, non-mutated human, so whichever ones he had were most likely spiritual or mental. Possibly physical if there were hidden inside the body, like her fangs or MS5’s fire blood. And a lower number if he was like she’d been, unable to figure out how to add mutations.
“Marie outside, MS5 inside. And this is Jinn.”
“Ace for the moment,” she ground out, turning to level a “what gives” look at her friend. “Okay, we all know we’re not NPCs. What’s next?”
“I, um...” he shifted, rubbing his right foot against the back of his left leg. “I wanted to know if I could be with you two. Help figure out what’s going on. Stay safe and all that.”
“Of course—”
“Not!” finished Ace. “Are you kidding? Either you’re an asshole to have knowingly signed up with LMFS, or you’re an idiot who couldn’t find their way out with an AI guiding you. Either way, you’re worthless and a liability.”
“Ace,” admonished MS5. “He’s asking for help.”
“Or trying to trick us.” She shook her head. “We don’t know where LMFS is. How the hell can you trust him after the crap he pulled in the cave?”
“Funny... I remember being killed by you.” MS5 jerked a thumb back at Kris. “Not him.”
Ace curled an arm around her stomach at the verbal hit. She took a deep breath and shoved the feeling of betrayal down, deep down, and still almost choked on it.
“No, he didn’t kill either one of us, and,” she added flipping Kirs the bird, “he was too much of a coward to stay and fight against LMFS, he just booked it outta the cave like a dragon wanted him with ketchup.”
“I’m sorry about running,” Kris said, his head bouncing between the two of them. “I promise I won’t do it again. “
“See? He feels bad about it.”
Ace felt herself actually growling at the denseness MS5 was displaying. She’d fucking killed herself to help her friend, and this was the thanks she was getting? Maybe she should have let LMFS slit MS5’s throat too.
“Yeah, sure, that makes everything okay—”
“So—”
“N. O.” Ace pointed at Kris. “Why the fuck do you want to have him around when he was useless before?”
“Because the rules have changed Ace,” MS5 said calmly, a slight tightening near the corner of their eyes showing that this was getting to them. “It’s the right thing to do. This isn’t a game anymore, and we should be good to each other.”
Ace jerked her quarterstaff away and stabbed the ground as she took a step.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from Mr. I’m-Useless-and-I’ll-Get-You-Killed here,” she said, jerking a thumb over at him. “You wanna trust him, you go right ahead. Not my fault if he murders you, or brings LMFS to do it. I’ll try to get revenge for you when that happens.”
Both MS5 and Kris said something as she stomped away, but Ace concentrated on making sure she didn’t slip as she walked down the hill. By the time she got to the bottom there were no more human noises in range, and turning back showed that they were both standing there and watching here.
If he runs again,” she shouted, cupping her hands to be heard, “come to Briny.”
And with that she turned away, cursing Marie and their stupid, fucking, stubbornness that would want them to bring someone unknown into the group. Where the fuck was the paranoia? That would have at least worked in Ace’s favor, making it so that the two of them would have arrived back at Briny safely. But nooooooo... Marie was a goody-goody two shoes that always tried to find the best in people, and help them when they could.
Shadows crept over her as she entered the part of the road that was shaded by trees. Her heart was at war. Marie had been her first real friend when Jinn had started video game testing, and damned if they didn’t overlook some... most of people’s faults.
“They better be fucking lucky this time around,” muttered Ace, jabbing the quarterstaff harder than she really needed to on the packed ground. Already she was regretting leaving her friend, but even if she started walking back towards them, they were probably already gone. A quick look over her shoulder showed her the truth of that... and with her ankle that meant she wouldn’t be able to catch up. “Stupid fucking Marie. Stupid fucking MS5.” A list followed of all the avatar names she remembered from previous games.
She tried to make sure her complaints about Marie were low enough not to attract attention from anyone who might be in the nearby area. Already she could feel her body becoming exhausted from being on guard every second of every minute. It was different when a person could rely on respawning to safely come back, but she wasn’t ready to trust her one life to a game with a missing system.
“I need people I can depend on,” she said to herself. “NPCs as a buffer and other testers to figure out what the fuck’s going on.” A throbbing in her head made her stumble, and it was only through the grace of some fucking god who loved her that she didn’t fall flat on her face. “Okay Jinn... stop worrying. Stop panicking. Hell, stop thinking. Concentrate on getting back to Briny, and then you can think about what to do.”
It didn’t work. She worried about what was going on the whole way there, continually trying to make her statistics appear, or giving that a break by trying to summon the AI helper from earlier. When Briny Breeze appeared in the distance she sighed in relief. All the NPCs in there were friendly to her, she had medicine from before the apocalypse had happened, and she had her own house she was squatting, with some of the better supplies hidden in secret caches on both the first and second floor.
“Ace?”
It was Tom, his stick-thin legs the easiest thing to pick out. She mostly ignored him as she went past, grunting under her breath to acknowledge that she’d seen him, at any rate. Ace limped up the main path to where the vet was, her best chance at medicine, when something hit her square in the back. A rock clattered to the ground. She turned, bringing up her arms to block herself from another attack.
“What the hell is your problem Tom?!”
“My problem?!” he screamed back, coming closer. “You kept fucking killing me, that’s my problem!”
Ace felt the blood drain from her face. He was an NPC, how was he remembering that? He should be following the open script he’d been given… Memories of every day that she’d killed him flashed in front of her eyes. Even though she’d done it, it was fine. He’d still be in the town the next day, scowling at her until she’d pulled him into an empty house and upped her xp again.
A stone glanced off of her face, and within a few seconds she could feel blood dripping down on the left side.
“Not so big now, are you?” sneered Tom, advancing. She could pick out the rocks cradled in his arm, and he chose a sharp one to throw next. “What’s wrong? Don’t like it when your victims fight back?”
She didn’t answer him, choosing to hold her staff—fuck she wished it really was a shield right now—ready, and wait for the next rock to be thrown.