“I can find any bomb or trap within 100 feet of me,” Alicia says.
“Mercy, can you fly and carry Alicia?” I ask.
Mercy cracks her neck and stretches her arms. “Are you under 100 pounds?”
Alicia takes off her gun belt, backpack and other equipment, leaving her in her skin tight sneaking suit. “Now I am.”
Mercy, in her mecha armor, cradles Alicia like a princess and takes off in a whoosh of green particles shooting out of the flight pack on her back. Mercy spirals around the green lady for about a minute, then comes back down.
“Four minutes left, HEROES!!!” comes the mocking voice over a PA system. I check my watch and make note of the time.
Alicia pops out of Mercy's arms and opens up the same holographic Minimap skill that I have. We all look at the translucent diagram of Lady Liberty. Then Alicia uses two more techniques in rapid succession and the hologram grows, overlapping with the actual statue. It's like we can see the inside of the statue from the outside. There are five glowing red dots where the bombs are.
“Don't worry about disarming them,” Alicia says. “Just put them in inventory, which should put them in stasis until I can disarm them one by one.” We all nod.
I call out, “Mercy, fly to the head, I'll get to the armpits, Quins, Alicia, can you get the waist and knee? Jose, you're slowest so just take the pedestal bomb.” After I issue the orders I don't even wait for confirmation, I bolt for the entrance and begin my ascent.
The inside is a rickety, “definitely not safe for tourists” staircase. I dash up, taking stairs five or six at a time. I'm leaping rather than stepping up the winding path. I get to my self-assigned nuke. It looks like a large suitcase, with metal tubing, wires and an LCD timer ticking down.
I lift it, it disappears into my inventory, and before I can call out my own victory, I hear Quins. “Got mine sorted out.”
This is followed by each other person calling out their nuclear weapon acquisition. The whole operation took less than 2 minutes.
We reconvene at the foot of the pedestal and I go over the next step. “Alicia, did you take a good look at yours? Can you disarm it in time?”
“The short answer is no,” she almost looks embarrassed to say it. “I want a whole ordinance team for this. It looks like these are from the 70s and I'm not an expert in old nukes.”
“Ah,” I say, underwhelmed. “So we're all just walking around with nukes in our pockets. Great.”
“We drop everything in inventory if we die,” Jose reminds us. “So if any of us die, we'd drop our nuke and two or three minutes later-”
“So we're not dying anymore today,” I say firmly. “We still have about 12 hours and only five floors to go. We take it slow and carefully. From this point on we are ninjas, not SWAT.”
“Sorry, what mate?” Quins gives a head tilt.
Mercy chimes in, still lacking her usual brightness. “Tabletop role playing game terms. You enter areas like SWAT, fast and loud, or like ninjas, slow and quiet.”
Quins nods at that. “Oh, I quite like that. Ninjas it is.”
We spend the next hour scouring the statue for any enemies, items and secrets. I think we all try to ignore the whole “one person dying means probably everyone dying scenario.” Alicia's Operative class gives her bonuses to find hidden stuff and she finds a replica of the US Constitution, a set of Die Hard VHS tapes, a torch and a crown. Only the last two are important.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Fire Of Hope. Are you hoping for a better life? Back in the day, people thought America was that better life. Lol! Little did they know how badly immigrants were/are treated. Oh well, at least your country has the most diverse food choices in the world. Anyways, if you light this torch it burns up quickly but gives you +5 to a stat you're hoping to improve.
Crown Of The Political Icon. This crown grants you a +1 to all stats if you have at least one level in Politician, Representative or Senator. If you have a level in all three, you instead gain +3 to all stats. Also, thank you for voting.
“Any of us could use that torch, honestly.” I say after relaying the System Scan's info, minus the snark.
“Roll off?” asks Jose.
“Roll off,” I nod. Before Quins can ask for translation I offer, “in RPGs when there's loot and more than one person wants it, you just roll a die to see who gets it, highest number wins. No argument, no drama.”
I pull out my cell and open the digital dice roller I have for when I forget my dice at home. “Since Luck is a stat now I think just one person should roll for everyone. Mercy, do the honors?” I'm trying to get her involved because she's still moping. Nothing wrong with a good mope, but we need to move forward as well.
She takes the phone, rolls five times, and flatly announces that I won it. I take the torch, think about my Dexterity and light it with a fire spell.
Notice! Due to the effect of Fire Of Hope, your Wisdom has risen by 5!
Wait, really? Well, damn, okay then. My Wisdom has risen to 12. And my improved wisdom immediately tells me that this thing said it would burn up quickly, but wasn't single use. I hand it to Mercy. “Quick, think of a stat then pass it around!”
She takes it, thinks for a second, then hands it to Alicia. The torch gets passed twice more until it comes back to me for some reason.
Notice! Due to the effect of Fire Of Hope, your Dexterity has risen by 4!
“Shit, it still works, keep passing!” We quickly pass it around again. It comes back to me and the wick is low.
Notice! Due to the effect of Fire Of Hope, your Strength has risen by 2!
We pass it around until it winks out before Jose gets his third boost, but by then we're all laughing at the absurdity. Five grown ass adults are playing hot potato in front of the statue of Liberty. Five adults with nuclear weapons in their pockets.
We take a minute to enjoy the free stats before moving on. The way forward is down. A long metal ladder in the basement of Lady Liberty is the only way out of this bizarre place. We head down, carefully and cautiously.
It's a long ladder. It must be almost a hundred feet tall. It takes about 3 minutes to climb down.
The ladder leads down into what seems to be a utility closet. There's just one bare light bulb in the room, shining dimly over mops, buckets and bottles of bleach. The contents of the mop pails are worrying though.
“Is ‘at blood?” Quins asks after he slides down the ladder.
I'm busy at the door, cracking it open to see what awaits us. “Looks like a hospital,” I say. A nurse takes a patient on a stretcher down the hall, away from us. The patient was moaning and talking in Pashto. The nurse had a fish head. “Ah, good, we found a Lovecraftian hospital. Not going to be horrible at all.”
Conversation Log 0055
Fortuna: What's human-monster interaction going to look like?
Saturn's 2nd Ring: What's human-animal interaction look like?
Fortuna: I don't appreciate sarcasm. You said some monsters would be of human intelligence.
Saturn's 2nd Ring: Of human intelligence *or greater.*
Fortuna: Right. So what happens with that?
Saturn's 2nd Ring: I dunno?
Fortuna: Are they sentient? Will people start demanding rights for them?
Saturn's 2nd Ring: The dead monsters reset, becoming their original selves. So it's not like they have childhoods or anything. They're video game monsters. Even if they talk, they're only able to do and say a few things. Things the system expects that creature to do and say.
Fortuna: So no monster nation rising up?
Saturn's 2nd Ring: Would that be so bad?
Fortuna: Depends on the location, I suppose.
Saturn's 2nd Ring: I'm only worried about the smarter monsters trying to break their cycles. If some of the smart monsters decide to fight the system itself we might be in trouble.