“We need a peel and heal!”  a voice called out in in the cacophony of battle, the clash of swords the zap of spells, and she really did not hear it at all.  She absentmindedly shot off spells here and there aiming at a monster that passed into her narrow line of sight.

A small fireball accumulated at the end of her staff and she flung it towards a goblin that had run in front of her.  The fireball sped forward and like a homing missile followed the goblin until it splattered all over the creature’s flesh. Causing it to shriek in pain and then quickly fall over, red damage numbers floated in the air over it, and she could see the xp meter on her hud tick up slightly.

And this is what she continued doing, completely robotic and mechanical, unaware that her party was calling out to her.  At least she was unaware until the first member fell.  It was after all hard to miss a large red x that covered one of the portraits of her party members.

Blinking her eyes she came back to reality and went about her duty and started healing and buffing the three surviving party members, now that they had their healing support back it didn't take long for the goblins to be completely wiped out. Once there were no enemies they rezzed the fallen, who was a person that called himself B-Rain for reasons unknown to anyone else stood up and walked right over to Monica.

“What the hell, I called for a peel and heal did you not hear me? Are you blind?”  he asked, he was not being overly aggressive, he was just slightly agitated. His avatar was a tall tanned barbarian with long flowing locks of a deep amber brown, standing at about seven foot tall he was an imposing sight to see, what he actually looked like she didn't know, nor did she want to know, it didn't matter.

“Sorry, my head's not in the game today, my bad.”  Monica said, kicking a stone at her feet.  Her avatar looked alot like her, with the exception of the pointed ears, and the tribal  tattoos down one arm.  She was a Tribal Elf, a healer.

“Cut her some slack she’s thinking about a guy...”  Christa laughed, making a kissy face motion in thin air and teasing her poor friend who’s cheeks dyed red.

“Oh?”  asked the only other female member of this party, there were two males and three females.

“Yep, she has a date on saturday, shes all excited, even going to have me over later to help her clean up her apartment.”  Christa laughed.

“Chhhrrriiiissstaaaaa!”  Monica shouted and covered her friends mouth with a hand, this just served to make christa laugh more, and even caused several of the other members of the party to burst out into laughter.

“What's his name?”  the leader of this little band asked, everyone called him Siris.  he was a pretty serious guy, and he liked to keep things organized and ordered, his avatar was small, a thief elf with long black hair and a narrow face, someone who could easily slip away in a crowd.

“Matt,”  Monica said, her cheeks dying more red than before.

“Well I have a guest pass if he wants to come play with us,”  Siris said.

“No,”  Christa laughed “We already tried that one, had a guest pass ready to go for him and everything, but he doesn't like VRMMOs.”

”Sounds to me like you need to find a better man,”  B-Rain said, winking at her. “Someone like me,”  he said, flexing his muscles.

“We all know your a fat no lifer that lives in your mom’s apartment still B” Siris shot back at him, shutting the barbarian down. “Well the offer is still there should he change his mind.”  he looked around at the pile of goblin corpses. “Well then let us search these goblins, with any luck we can get a drop on one of their ears.”

“We have been grinding these guys for hours Siris, I don't know our drop rate seems to be really low here.”

“I don't understand why we can't just cut one off of the goblin, why does it have to be a drop?”  B-Rain said grumbling as he kicked a corpse.

“MMO remember?” Christa said, and looking at the pile she stated”I'm just glad there's no blood in this game, I can't stand the sight of it.” Monica nodded, she came here to have fun, not to be repulsed…

***

Matt wiped the blood off of his face with the hem of his shirt, smearing it all over, it gave him a particularly savage look. With an angry look on his face he pushed the thing off of him, he couldn't really get a good look at it, not while it had been trying to eat him, but he was able to see it now.

It was a rat.

The world's largest fucking rat ever. Damn thing was the size of a small dog, with coarse bristly hair and it looked like there were even some boney spikes sticking out of its body, almost like a hyped up porcupine.

An extremely aggressive porcupine.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He pushed it off of the top of him, and carefully stood back up.  Planting one foot on the head of the beast he braced himself to remove the pipe that was embedded in its head. With a quick yank he removed the pipe, but the sharp jerking motion also caused the creature’s neck to snap.  He didn't think the rat minded, seeing as it was already dead.

He kicked it to the side, and watched as its corpse slid down the gap in the floor that had formed in this room, disappearing as it fell straight down. “Of course its rats,  no rpg is complete without them right?” he grumbled to himself. He looked over at Willow, she had also been attacked by a rat, this one slightly smaller than the one that had gone after Matt but no less ferocious. He pooled the saliva in his mouth and attempted to spit out the nasty flavor of its blood that had gotten into his mouth but to no avail.  He hated that salty flavor, with its dull metallic undertones, and knowing the blood came from a very large rodent made his repulsion even larger.

He had told her that they needed to use the other weapons at their disposal seeing as they only had one partial clip for the 10 millimeter pistol they couldn't afford to use it all at once.  Not unless absolutely necessary.  He looked down the hole where he had just kicked the corpse of the rat, and towards which willow was pushing her own and noticed something sticking in the wall of that floor.  Upon further inspection it would seem as though a massive I beam had fallen from the building next door, and seeing as it was built unnaturally close to the one they were currently in it created a ramp from one building to the other, spanning the ten foot distance nicely.

Well the, it would look like that was the way they had to go seeing as the elevator was unresponsive and the stairway down was blocked by a complete cave in of concrete and metal.  Perhaps the building across the gap had fared better and they could get down through that one. It was worth a try at the very least.  He climbed down into the hole, followed quickly by Willow, and had wished he had the foresight to not pushed the rat carcuses down the hole into the area he was going to be in.  

They smelled something awful.

And this was when they were still alive, or rather when they were recently dead, he didn't want to stick around for after they sat for a while…  they made their way over to the I beam that bridged the gap, Matt tested it by grabbing one end and feeling if he could move it at all.  It didn't budge even an inch, then again it was a solid metal I beam a good two feet across and was wedged pretty well in between two buildings  so what did he really expect?

He looked down, they were a good 20 stories up, and they had to cross over a two foot in diameter sloped I beam, he didn't know about Willow but he sure as hell was going to shimmy across that on his ass.  And that was exactly what they did, he could feel the metal as it burned through his jeans, externally heated by the sun.  10 feet in as many minutes.  Without looking down and by gripping the edge of the i Beam he made it across with Willow not  a second behind. All that was left was a short trip down 20+ flights of stairs and they were soon at ground level.

He was about to walk out when he heard something, the crunch of boots on glass, followed by a few heavy thuds.  Peaking out he saw three men, each armed lightly with sidearms and some sort of leather and metal scrap armor that might provide some melee damage protection but not much else.  He looked at them, were these people? Or were they Npc?  It was truly hard to tell, but judging by the way they were walking along they seemed as though they might be players, behind them walked a donkey, thing, it was missing most of its fur and had strange protrusions all over its body, and it was pulling a small wagon..  

He pulled out his 10 millimeter pistol and dropped the mag out to count the rounds.  five , he had five, that would be two rounds more than necessary.  With a shrug he made up his mind, they had resources, and he needed resources.

So he and Willow silently shadowed them, it took some time but they followed them several blocks away from the main base, it wouldn't do to raid right in front of your base.  He was about to make his move when a new party showed up, this one wearing leather dusters over metal armor.

“Hand over the goods and you can pass in peace.”  the apparent leader of the gang spoke up, just barely loud enough for Willow and Matt to hear. He was a tall man, looking to be in his forties, with wispy brown hair and a mean look on his face that almost dared you to try something.

“As if Ortas, we have free and clear passes for the area,”  one of the caravaneers said, removing his leather cap, and much to Matt's surprise revealing a huge green mohawk.  Or rather one that was not currently put up, it had flopped over to the side covering half of his metal impaled face.

It was none other than shrappy.

“Listen I am not going to repeat myself, surrender or we will take it by force.”

“You can go to hell.”  shrappy growled, reaching for his pistol, but before he or any of his companions could even draw their side arms the five duster clad raiders were all over them, beating them with improvised bludgeoning clubs.  For some strange reason they didn't use a firearm perhaps to avoid the noise? Or damaging the product? Matt didn't know, and he also didn't care.

Handing the 10 millimeter over to Willow he grabbed the knife from its place on her stomach and held a finger up to his lips.  He then pointed to the ground indicating for her to stay low,  he was about to leave when she grabbed him by the pants leg, pointed over to a better vantage point and pulled a smoke grenade off of her webbing, tossing it up and down.  He looked at her and then at the grenade, and nodded.

By the time they were in place the caravaneers were all tied up and on there knees and the raiders were all laughing and going through there new loot. Well the two of the caravaneers that had survived that was, one lay on the pavement several of his limbs at odd angles. Matt peaked his head out of the window, he was currently in a bombed out building in street level, or rather whatever was left of the bombed out building.  It was only two partial brick walls, and a pile of rubble, but it was a good vantage point and it would allow him and Willow to get the caravan in a scissor attack.

He crept out, all of them had there back to him, sloppy.  Using Willow’s knife he crept up behind the furthest one and grabbed him around from behind, his hand wrapping over the man’s mouth and sunk the blade deep into his neck, drawing a line across his vocal cord, cutting off any of the man’s protests.  Matt felt the warmth of the blood as it covered his hand, and he felt the man go slack, laying him down carefully as to not make any sound he relieved the raider of his side arm, and holding it in his left hand he tucked away the knife and pulled the pipe back out with his right.

He looked over to where willow was and nodded, she tossed the smoke grenade in a high arc, and as soon as it hit the pavement and made a loud metallic clink everyone looked over in that direction, weapons drawn. It spewed smoke, covering and obscuring their view of anything and everything.

Matt rushed in, dashing into the fray of the scattered and confused men. Grabbing one by the throat he slammed him into the pavement, and quickly brought his foot down on the man’s neck as hard as he could, he didn't even stop to watch as the man’s eyes bulge when he found he could no longer breath. Another one was just at arm’s length, and had brought his rifle almost up to bear. shoving the man’s gun out of his path he swung the metal pipe upwards, it connected right under his chin. His head snapped back with a sickening sound as the blow snuffed out his life.

At this point the other two raiders seemed to have realised what was going on, they turned to fire on Matt, and he felt a round go through his shoulder.  The pain was admittedly pretty bad, it felt like someone had pressed his shoulder with a thousand pounds of burning iron, but that didn't stop him from using his newly aquired 9 millimeter pistol to retaliate.

One round, and the shot went cleanly through the leader's head.  He dropped so fast Matt wondered if the physics were a little off in this world. He looked over to see how Willow was faring with the last one, only to catch a scene of her pinning down the man and firing a shot into his exposed face.  He held up his hand and flashed a thumbs up, which was returned to him by the woman.  A short sweep revealed that everyone had been mopped up in the assault.  He walked over to the tied up people, the woman was crying and thanking him, but he walked right past her to shrappy.

“Wait, oy oy oy I know you!” shrappy called out “You're that asshole that charged me so much for my vidcom!”  he said, and Matt smiled.

“Yeah, Im that asshole.”  he said, and levelled the gun with the man’s head. “Have a nice day!”  and pulled the trigger.  Shrappy’s head disappeared in a shower of blood and viscera, and he fell over limply.  The woman right next to him screamed in horror, blood and bits plastering the right side of her face.

“Wha-What are you doing?”  she asked looking at him with wide eyes.

“What am I doing?”  he repeated, pointing the gun at her.  “I am raiding.”  he responded, pulling the trigger...