2 Weeks Ago
Mercy struggled to get the bar up. She breathed deeply and pushed up as hard as she could. Including the weight of the bar, she was trying to bench press 100 pounds.
Madeline was spotting her. “Come on girl, you got this.”
The bar wobbled a bit before Mercy was able to fully extend her arms. “There!” she said with a triumphant smile. And then immediately let the bar drop.
Madeline caught the bar before it came down on Mercy's windpipe. “Right, but safety first. Don't celebrate until you rack the weights.”
Mercy's arms flopped to her sides. “That was intense.”
“That was one rep.”
“It was a lot for me! Besides, why is this important for me anyways? I just use magic and costume powers.”
Madeline rolled her eyes. “Strength training in the modern era is less so you can swing an axe, and more so your mind and muscles are used to strain.”
“My mind? What's that got to do with pumping iron?”
Madeline began to rack the weights, knowing that this session was already over. “You have to be able to push through the pain. When you're training you're pushing through physical pain, but when emotional pain comes at you, you'll be able to push through that as well.”
“Like in a dungeon?” Mercy wiped sweat from her hands with a towel. “Not sure I'm going to be having emotional trauma unless Jun breaks up with me.”
Madeline is quiet for a moment before breaking it to Mercy harshly. “Someone you know will die. When it happens you have to be able to push through the pain. All the physically stressful training that law enforcement and the military does, it's not so you are super fit while you're fly a drone or snipe from 1000 feet away. It's so you know what pain is, and you can fight through it.”
The smile slid from Mercy's face. “Have you lost someone in the... Uh... Field?”
“Yeah, my first partner.” Madeline sat down on the bench. “I wasn't ready for it. So afterwards I took training seriously.” Madeline stared down at her rough hands and thick forearms. “So I could be tougher next time. So I could push through.”
Mercy sat down next to Madeline and put her soft hand around the other woman's rough hand.
-----
“I'll be okay,” Mercy says. She looks up at me with her big, dark eyes. Eyes usually sparkling with light and joy. Now eyes filled with sadness. Sadness and... Determination.
I look at the group. They're sitting, snacking and taking drinks from various bottles and cans. They had needed a break anyway.
There hasn't been much talk since Franco died. That was normal, I think. Each of us dealing with it on our own. I... Don't know how to feel. On the one hand, he died in a way that I wasn't responsible for. I wasn't there. On the other hand, I wasn't there. I could have been if I'd managed my Ki better in the fight before. If I had been stronger, had more Charisma or more Ki points. I could have been down here. I might have stopped his death. Or at least helped him pass in less pain.
Aside from that, I didn't really know the guy. I wouldn't call him a friend. An employee? A squad mate? I don't know. I'm not particularly good at dealing with loss. Or any emotion, really. Maybe I should upgrade my Wisdom. Does that govern emotional intelligence? I think I read that somewhere.
I stand up. Others start to stand as well, but I wave them back down. “I can take care of the rest of this floor. You guys rest up. Next floor is the 10th, so there's probably another horrible boss fight awaiting us.”
I begin to walk away when I feel a tug on my sleeve. “Come back soon,” I hear Mercy say in a soft voice. I nod and walk to the thoroughly wrecked hall where we fought the radioactive guys.
I look at the half-exploded area. Quins swept it for coins and items already. He also said the next group of foes was pretty far away, down the hall and around where the path takes a right turn. I walk slowly forward and send a wakizashi ahead, casting Ping every few seconds. I find my targets.
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I can see them on my radar, about 250 feet away. I dash over to the end of the hall and take a peek. There's a dozen more radioactive men sitting down at desks, doing... Paperwork? It's a large open air office area with dozens of desks, only some of which are occupied by these creatures. I take in the odd scene, humanoids in thick, tan hazmat suits sitting quietly and scribbling on paper. I quietly get closer and try to see what they're doing.
One gets up to fill a coffee cup. He goes to the coffee pot and pours piping hot joe into his “World's Best Dad” mug. He flips his visor open and green radioactive glow shines out. He pours some of the coffee into the visor. It makes a sizzling sound, and the green glow brightens a bit.
Dungeons are fucking weird.
I have 90 Arcana Points. That's 7.5 AP per bad guy until I'm empty. I can do that. I hover 7 wakizashis in front of me and begin my assault. The coffee drinker is standing up and closest to me so he gets it first. Seven cutting streams of water lance his face. He drops to the ground and all the others turn to face me. I take that second to pull my blades into position above the head of another foe and literally rain death down on him. The others stand and all of them open their visors to begin charging their radiation beams. My blades each take a different target, firing short bursts of water to stagger or distract the monsters. It doesn't work, and I run back around the corner. Green rays crisscross the spot I was just standing in. The carpet and walls are set ablaze with the raw heat and energy.
If I stay behind cover, it doesn't do much and I can't see to shoot. So fuck it, as soon as the beams stop I head back to the office space. I run at top speed and pass the desks in an instant to find myself at the far wall of the room. My blades fly and split into two groups, two groups of three wakizashis each. Each group encircles a hazmat hoodlum and then water cuts it to death. With fewer focused on each monster it takes two shots per blade. 62 AP and 8 monsters left.
Two guys try to rush me but I'm way too quick for them. I run to the back left corner of the room while my Water Cutter slices up two more foes. Three hazmat visors open and the monsters charge their beams at me. I run into the center of the room, leaping on top of one desk and leaping to another, then another desk. As I fly through the room my magic works it's magic and the two goons who tried to chase me fall to the ground, heads punctured by very hard water.
The monsters track my movements and I timed it right. Their beams fire off as I'm in their midst. I leap high as the three second charge time lapses and their beams fire into each other. Blazing heat engulfs the room. Desks and papers catch fire or are incinerated. The radioactive guys who are in another's blast are knocked a dozen feet back, toppling over. As I land from my jump there's just one still standing. He gets seven hydro beams to the face. The rest scramble to get up, but their clumsy bodies have difficulty doing so. I shoot another full of holes. 34 AP and four monsters left. I got this. I turn around in place and watch as Water Cutter rips apart each of the remaining baddies, jets dropping on their heads from my wakizashis above them. I've got 6 AP and no one left but me.
My Intelligence is 100, which means I get back 100 AP per hour, or 1.66 per minute. If I need to kill about 25 more monsters, and each one takes 7 seconds of water cutter to finish off. No, I have 116% proficiency with Water Cutter now, granting me 16% extra pressure. So let's say 6 streams per kill, 6 AP per kill. I'll need... 150 AP to use Water cutter to finish things off. Except I'll be getting more and more proficiency as I go. I do some math and with proficiency and pressure scaling up with each 1 AP use of the spell, I'll need 99 AP to clear out the entire floor. A little over an hour.
That's not fast enough. I need another type of attack, one that won't use AP and won't cut or pierce the hazmat suits. Punching? Punching could work. I look around at the wrecked office and spy a few blunt objects I could use with telekinesis.
I swing open the double doors out of the office and walk down a short hall to find a cafeteria to my right. I peer through the window in the door. There are six radioactive guys at a table. They have food in front of them but it looks like it's made of plastic. They make the motions of eating but the sandwiches just push against their visors and then get put back down on their paper plates.
I'm going to try something... Stupid. Yeah, I'll admit that this is probably stupid. One of my inventory slots has a red cooler in it. I bring it out and open it up. Inside is a pile of Jimmy John's sandwiches. I grab six, and enact telekinesis on them. I crack open the door to the cafeteria. I float the sandwiches over to the radioactive guys. I put the sandwiches on their plates, on top of the plastic food.
The first guy to notice lifts the sandwich and tries to shove it through his visor. It's at this point I realize that I should have unwrapped the sandwiches. The wrapped sub gets mushed into the guy's visor. Another guy unwraps the sandwich first, then mashes it into his visor. Well done, sir, well done. A third guy unwraps his sandwich, then opens the visor and then puts it inside the suit. I hear a sizzle and smell toasted sandwich. The bulge of the sandwich slides down the inside of the guy's suit. Then smoke comes out of his visor and I can see the orange glow of flames mixed with his green radiation glow. Then his suit starts on fire from the inside out, shooting green lasers across the room as it opens up. The lasers hit his buddies who are knocked out of their blue plastic chairs. That guy continues to burn but is still sitting calmly at the table, and eventually he slumps over dead... I think.
So, what I think happened, is that the sandwich started on fire, and whatever these things are actually made of is highly flammable. Or, perhaps the suits can contain the heat of the radioactive men, but not the additional heat of a burning sandwich. I'm not really sure. I'll call a Mythbuster and find out later.
That's when the others get up, find their sandwiches, unwrap them and eat them the same way. Over the next few minutes I see the remaining five monsters start on fire and explode because of eating sandwiches.
I repeat, dungeons are fucking weird.
And Franco is dead. Shit.