Kyeruu tapped his foot impatiently. He and 3 other squads had been ordered here to defend against raiders, supposedly. The 4 other squads that had encountered them had also supposedly been thwarted with either undiscovered magic, weapons that had possibly come from the Wall of Living Stone, or both. The reports were confusing, to say the least.

However, Kyeruu wasn’t that mad, because he had the privilege of being able to see an Honouro clad in the Pre-Collapse armor that their runners had found while exploring the bunkers deep beneath the compound. The armor itself looked strange, a rich black with stripes of green shot through the material. It was smooth, like marble, but let loose a metallic sound when one of the squad members had knocked on it earlier with the permission of the Honouro wearing it.

Suddenly, the door to the room Kyeruu was in burst open, and a man clad in green ran in, strangely. He was carrying a slim, lithe form in his arms.

“Help! Somebody, help! My wife needs help! She’s in labor!” The man cried, but Kyeruu was immediately suspect.

But, it seemed his comrades didn’t share the same feelings, for they all dropped their weapons and rushed to help the poor man. However, the Honouro wordlessly drew his huge greatsword and began to lumber forward. Kyeruu stayed back and watched.

It was a good thing he did, because the ‘husband’ immediately adopted a cocky grin and hurled the woman in his arms at the group, who gracefully flew through the air and sliced open two throats as she did.

“It’s a trick, you fools! She is obviously not with child! Attack!” Kyeruu angrily shouted, then drew his shortsword and charged. Kyeruu heard boots running through the halls to respond to the shouts of the entry chamber.

The woman who had been thrown was fending off 4 guards, but she was slowly being pushed back. Meanwhile, while the focus was on her, the man in green was reaching into his pack for something. Then, Kyeruu ambushed him. Bringing his blade down on his head, Kyeruu swung down with all of his might. But, the man jumped back and pushed Kyeruu forward, sending him stumbling. The raider then clumsily withdrew a small, black object from his pocket. To him, it looked like a catalyst. Kyeruu once again lunged at the raider, hoping to stop him before he had the chance to let loose a spell, but the raider pressed the black object into his chest, and Kyeruu felt pain, pain like nothing he had ever felt.

He convulsed, falling to the ground. Kyeruu’s mind went blank as his muscles spasmed and jerked about. He tried to move, to escape, but his body wouldn’t listen to his commands.

Then, the raider pulled out another object from his pocket, vaguely shaped like a boomerang, while still pressing the taser to Kyeruu’s side. He aimed the tip of the boomerang at Kyeruu’s head, and Kyeruu felt no more.

. . .

I swung my pistol up from the ground and unloaded on the other guard that tried to save his friend. His head snapped back and he collapsed to the ground. I blew the rest of the mag on a particularly bulky soldier that approached. It was a little bit overkill, but, uh, I don’t care.

I looked over at Aris to see her holding her own against 4 other guards. Wait, nevermind, three. One of them tripped over a conveniently placed banana, and got his throat slit as a punishment.

Considering that Aris was perfectly fine, and required no assistance, I turned towards the bigger threat, literally. The knight-looking motherfucker in the special armor that was bulletproof.

I considered my options. He had that huge broadsword, no, greatsword, which would take me out in one hit, so getting close wasn’t an option. His armor would block my bullets, and if I ran, then both the mission and, less importantly, Aris would be lost.

Resolved, I looked around at the dead bodies for a weapon. I saw a heavy looking mace on the floor, which might be just enough to cause some damage to the knight person. I picked it up off the ground and pointed it at the knight.

“Heh, jokes on you loser. I have over 30 million power in Rise of Kin- Ah!” My monologue was cut short when the knight suddenly lurched forward and swung his huge sword at me. I just barely managed to dive under it as it sailed over my head and slammed into the ground next to me with a CRASH.

Luckily for me, it got stuck in the floor, so while the knight tried to pull out the stuck blade, I swung the mace at his leg, aiming for the small space where his legs and chest plating meant.

Sadly, it didn’t make the satisfying crunch like I was hoping it would’ve, and made more of a BONG sound. However, I did notice a dent left behind, so there was that.

My victory was short-lived, because the knight’s gauntlet came racing out of nowhere and hit me hard on the chest. I flew backwards, the mace tumbling out of my hands as I hit the ground. As I tried to catch my breath, the knight suddenly tugged his sword out of the stone floor and raised it higher than I thought was possible above his head. I suddenly realized that he had purposefully gotten his sword stuck to draw me in.

My body felt like it weighed a gajillion pounds, but I had a trick up my sleeve.

“Look at that over there!” I shouted, and predictably, the knight’s head turned, like an IDIOT, around to look at where I pointed. I used this opportunity to roll away and scramble to my feet. I whipped out my pistol, reloaded it, and started shooting at the knight. Neck, arm joints, any gap in the armor I could see. Unluckily for me, my aim was shaky from desperation, and most of my shots went wide and hit far from their target. The knight jerked his gaze back to me, realizing the ruse, and readied his sword for another swing.

However, I had another idea. I pulled out the grappling hook from my pack, keeping my distance from the knight, and detached the rope part with the hook from the mechanical.

I suddenly dashed at the knight. He, in turn, swung his sword. At the last moment, I flung myself in another direction, and the sword sliced through the air, missing my ear by an inch. While the knight has his sword stuck in the floor, I slung the rope around his leg, rolling under a swipe from his armored gloves. I finished the knot, confident that it wouldn’t be able to be undone, and backpedaled away from the knight.

The hulking hunk of metal finally got his sword unstuck from the floor, and tried to lumber at me. But, I ran off to the right, wrapping the rope partially around his legs. He saw this and tried to cut it with his sword, but it just bounced off and his weight was thrown off by the greatsword. He fell to the floor with a mighty THUD. This was, while satisfying to watch, bad for me. I wasn’t able to wrap the rope around his legs anymore, because they had the floor unintentionally playing defense for them.

Just then, his sword toppled down on his head. It hit his helmet with a huge clang, and the knight’s movements stopped.

I watched in astonishment for a moment, then reloaded my pistol and looked over at Aris to see how she was doing.

She was still fighting with one guy, who kept her at a distance with a spear. I didn’t want to shoot in case I hit her, and in turn would have wasted a bullet, so I just walked up to the blissfully unaware spearman and blew his back out. With nine millimeters.

He fell to the ground, his spear clattering to the floor, and Aris glared at me.

“What the hell? I had him!” She complained, which sounded like a load of ungrateful bullshit to me.

“Ok.” I said, then turned away. She scoffed at my nonchalant reaction. I walked away to pick up my pack, and collected the grappling hook rope from the out-of-action knight. Funny how all you really ever need is a good conk on the head.

“Do we know where the stuff we have to blow up is?” Aris asked.

“Well, I’m guessing that it will be a huge pipe sticking out of the wall. Have you seen my rifle?” I absentmindedly replied. Patting myself down, I found nothing but a roll of hundreds from my drug trafficking operation I managed on the side and a black marker. I looked around, sighting my rifle on the ground.

“Why don’t you, uh, start looking?” I stepped towards my rifle. It had a few scratches on it, but was otherwise spotless. I couldn’t seem to remember when I dropped it, actually. Must’ve been in the heat of the moment. In the corner of my eye, I saw Aris perk up and look towards the door.

“Uh, Alan?” She nervously said. I picked up my rifle and inspected it.

“What?” I asked. I wasn’t really paying attention. Checking the mag, I had about 10 bullets left. Should reload now before I get caught in the middle of a fight.

“Do you hear that?” She backed up from the door that we had entered through.

“No, sorry, I don’t have any money.” I opened a pocket on my vest and grabbed a mag.

“What? No! The noise!” Aris frantically said. “You don’t hear it?”

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“What? What noise?” I jerked my head up, finally paying attention.

The noise was a slow, faint crackling noise coming from behind the door. I smelled ozone.

I backed up from the door as well.

The hairs on my arm rose up.

I finished reloading my rifle.

I moved the barrel up to aim at the door, but I moved slowly. Not fast enough.

Then all hell broke loose.

The door exploded with a flash of light, and arcs of lightning began bouncing around the room. I abandoned my guarding stance and leapt behind a pillar, making myself as small as possible as the electricity ricocheted off the walls and cooked the bodies of the guards we had killed. I knew that if I was unlucky, then a bolt would find its way over here, and the end result would end up being like what happens to your internal organs when a bullet ricochets around in your ribcage.

I curled up tighter and tighter with each impact, imitating a rolly polly. Who would’ve known those guys had the best method of survival all along? Well, that’s not really true, but it sure as hell seemed like it right now.

I thought about what to do after the bolts stopped bouncing. They had probably used the electric attack type thing to clear the room before entering, like throwing a grenade into a room to clear it. So, soldiers would probably flood in.

That was fine. I could handle soldiers. Soldiers were easy. But, I was more concerned about whoever had cast the lightning spell. Probably that magicman that I tossed a grenade at earlier to get off our tail. I wasn’t gonna worry about how he had survived, only to make sure he didn’t survive again.

The ricochets slowly fizzled out, and I looked out from behind my cover. The room was covered in black char marks, like a Star Wars set. The bodies of the soldiers we had killed were scorched to ashes, with small fires merrily burning away on the corpses.

I quickly scanned the room for my rifle, and I spotted it where it lay on the ground near where I had fought the knight dude, even though I didn’t remember dropping it. Stepping out from behind my pillar of safety, I looked both ways, checking for oncoming traffic, then went to reclaim my beloved 30-shooter.

I crouched to pick it up, and looked around for Aris. She must’ve had a better hiding spot than me, seeing as I couldn’t spot any trace of her. Or hear her. Wait, did she leave me behind?

Just then, the clomping of boots stole my attention as 3 soldiers charged into the room behind me. I whipped around and opened fire while retreating backwards to get some cover before the mage showed up.

One small problem though.

My backpack bumped up against the cold, unforgiving wall. I shuffled around, looking for a barrier of some kind to put between myself and the mage, while still firing at the soldiers that now hunkered down behind pillars of their own. I still managed to catch a few of them in the line of fire, mainly the ones that came after the first three. Scanning my surroundings again, I spotted a doorway about ten feet to my right.

I moved my way over there, keeping a clear line of sight on the door. When I reached the door, I reached out my left hand while using my right to jiggle the door handle. It was locked. So, I turned around and blew the handle off of the door, and kicked it open. It let me in fine after that.

But, as I moved into the hallway that the door led into, a voice yelled out from behind me.

“Invader! Thou shall not-” The voice cut off and turned into garbled goblin speak that I didn’t understand one bit. I turned to look, and whaddya know. It was a guy in a comically large blue robe, absent the point blue hat and the stars adorned on his clothes. I looked at my translator ring and saw that it had stopped glowing, which explained why the wizard dude had suddenly started speaking Russian. Or Chinese. They all sound the same.

Turns out looking away from the guy with the dangerous ability to control lightning was a mistake, because as soon as I did, I heard crackling. I ducked just in time to feel a searing heat pass over me, then jumped back up. I raised my rifle up at him, determined to not let him live this time.

I pulled the trigger five times, but he pulled one of the soldiers that had been hiding behind a pillar in front of him to use as a human shield before shouting something in whatever language he spoke, and a shimmering, translucent bubble appeared around him. He flung his staff forward and cast another spell, but I rolled to my right and fired a few experimental shots at his bubble thing. Sure enough, they disappeared in small flashes of light.

So, his oversized balloon was bulletproof. No problem. I’m sure it wasn’t, ha ha, GRENADE PROOF!

I unclipped the safety pin from my last grenade and flung it at him, but it did exactly what I didn’t want it to do and simply bounced off of it. This, was not good. However, I didn’t need a silly GUN to kill a silly MAGE. I just needed a silly melee weapon!

I swiped a short sword off the ground near me and started advancing. He muttered and cast off more lightning, but I jumped to the right and it sailed past me. He glared at me. I glared at him. We glared at each other. We did a lot of glaring.

I suddenly rushed at him, determined to test if I could simply walk past it. He lifted his staff up high and gave it a twirl, and a crackling orb of white electricity swelled into existence on the tip of his staff, giving him a whole, ‘God-Of-Thunder’, look. He lowered it right at me, shouting something that suspiciously sounded like, “Allahu Akbar!” But it couldn’t be that, right?

Nonetheless, a bright white line of pure electricity spit off from the tip, which looked a little… sus… to me, personally. The mage grinned, shouted another term that sounded weirdly like, “Death to America!” and he began to turn the point of the staff towards me. I pressed myself flat to the ground, but after it passed over me, he turned it back around and began scorching the ground in a premonition of what would happen to me if I stayed on the ground.

So, I leapt up and jumped over it. I began to treat it like a laser maze, one that me and Ryan had gone through for… training. Well, not training, more like we were running from the sergeant for unimportant reasons and we conveniently ended up in an amusement park. Anyway, I jumped and rolled under the laser as it came near me, still making my way towards the mage who stayed still, for some reason. I don’t know.

When I only had a few feet left, I leapt at him. One small issue though. I didn’t penetrate, which isn’t usually a problem I have often. I bounced off and tumbled to the ground as if I had run straight into Caseoh, which was a Youtuber that my dad used to watch, bless his soul. By the way, my dad’s not dead. He just sold his soul to some devil dude and disappeared into the Aether, or something. Also, the ‘Aether’ is code for prison, and he didn’t actually sell his soul, he sold crack.

The mage guffawed, and murmured something muffled by the force field. His laser lightning spell flickered out, and he shouted again, pointing a long, stereotypically crooked finger at me as a signal for his compatriots to apprehend me. However, when nothing happened, he looked around.

You see, when I had been dodging his long, white laser, he had been shooting it all over the room, which caused the unfortunate and completely unavoidable deaths of every single one of the soldiers he had charged into the room with.

“Y’know buddy, you probably should’ve turned off friendly fire in the menu,” I quipped. I wasn’t that proud of it, but I was on the floor with a mage about to kill me. Gimme a break.

He frowned, and spoke. I still didn’t understand him though, but when I didn’t answer he took it personally. He raised his staff to point at my face (c’mon man) and bellowed again. I was thankful for the force field, because I really didn’t wanna smell that stank wizard breath.

I raised my shoulders in a shrug and pointed at my ears, trying to carry across the fact that I didn’t understand him. He narrowed his eyes, and flipped the staff around so that the bottom end, which had a heavy-looking metal ball attached to it. He raised it above my head, and I realized his intentions. I tried to roll, but he drew a scrap of paper from his side bag and shouted something, and I couldn’t move at all, like I was stuck in a coffin. That’s not a very good comparison, huh.

The scrap of paper burned away into embers after he shouted the spell, and he prepared the strike. I braced myself, preparing to take the blow. He brought the staff down on my head, and I reflexively shut my eyes to protect them. But, I heard a yell, not from the mage guy, instead off to my left, and a shattering, like glass, but it didn’t sound right. The noise felt wavy. I don’t know how to describe it other than that. Maybe I was tweaking. I don’t know.

I opened my eyes to see a sight for sore eyes, or it would’ve been had it been somebody that I actually liked. Aris was there, and the mage was on the ground. I saw shards of flickering light floating away in the air, and I realized that Aris had, somehow, broken the wizard man’s bubble.

“Ah, blah blah blah! Blee bloo blah blah BLAH!” Aris babbled, or at least that’s what it sounded like. I stared at her blankly, and she groaned before tossing me another ring. I slipped it on.

“Why do you burn out translation rings so fast? Are you special needs?” Aris whined.

I didn’t answer that.

“Anyway, we need to go. More soldiers are coming and we still have no idea where that pipe you said we had to blow up is.” Aris tossed me my pack, which I caught as I rose to my feet. “Hurry up.” She started to walk off.

“Hold up.” I called out. She turned around.

“What!?” She replied with an exasperated tone.

“Don’t go yet. One thing I wanna do.”

“WHAT!?”

“Call it life insurance.” I pulled out my pistol and waltzed over to the fallen form of the mage. I was gonna make sure that he couldn’t use his huge ball to smack against my forehead again. I mean, uh, whatever.

“Did you hear a word of what I just said!?” She stomped back over to me. “Besides, are you trying to say my methods are unsound?”

“No and yes.” I pressed my finger to the base of the mage’s skull, and sure enough, the fuckers heart was still beating. Aris scoffed behind me in response to my answer, and mumbled something about the unsound birth control magic that had resulted in my conception, but I pretended to not hear her. There would be time for payback later. Now though, I had some payback to deliver. I pushed the barrel of the gun up against the mage’s head, before thinking, wait, I already said payback. That’s gonna make things seem awkward. But do I really care about that? Also, why do I hear boots? Oh n-

A crossbow bolt thwipped past my head and skittered across the floor. I heard a man swear behind me, and I turned to see a crossbowman reloading his weapon. I quickly aimed and shot a trio of bullets into his body, but more rounded the corner. I retreated behind a nearby pillar while taking shots at them. They seemed to have brought more range users, which meant that they were learning, which wasn’t all that good for me.

“I fucking told you more were coming, but nooooooooo! You just had to blow it up, with your pride and your-” Aris’s whining cut off when another knight thundered past the burned doors of the entrance, carrying a massive spiked ball on a chain instead of the broadsword that the other one had used, which caused my stomach to drop faster than my balls did when I hit puberty.

“Oktimetogoguys!” I squealed, then made a run for it. Crossbow bolts flew past me, but I just kept running. Aris ran ahead of me, which made me worried that she would close the other set of doors on me, but when I practically flew past them and I didn’t meet a solid wooden barrier, I was pretty confident she wouldn’t. I turned on a heel and slammed them shut myself. I slid the conveniently placed door blocker thingy across the door, and stepped back. The knight on the other side gave it the old college try, but even he failed to break past the Stalinium wood. I heard muffled shouting on the other end as they reorganized.

“Alrighty. Now, we just gotta find the pipes.” I scanned the walls, but even my keen eagle eye couldn’t spot any clues. “Look for any, uh, signs that might tell us where they keep these pipes.”

“Like this one?” I turned and saw Aris pointing at a sign with unintelligible words on it, illuminated by little lamps placed all down the hallway. Very medieval looking if you ask me.

“Ah ha! I have spotted something!” I strutted over with my special officer kicks, and read the sign closely. I didn’t understand a single word.

“Yes, yes... Hmm... I see… I believe this dates back to the Neo-Paleolithic era, where the, er, KIng Pato the Second took power of Pizza Hut in a bloody betrayal of Julius Caesar, and then Rome collapsed, and split into North and South Korea, caused the colonization of the Americas by Marco Polo…” I murmured wisely. Aris just stared blankly at me.

Suddenly, a man holding a hunk of bread slammed open the door beside us. He did a little jig as he walked out, having not seen us yet. However, when he turned, he spotted both of us and froze.

We stared at each other, me and Aris just as frozen. I spoke first.

“Hey, buddy. What’s this sign say?” I pointed at the sign that I couldn’t read.

“Can’t you-” He began.

“NO I FUCKING CAN’T! IS THAT GOING TO BE A PROBLEM!?” I yelled into his face, and he flinched back from the force of my shout.

“Ok! I’ll do it!” He half sobbed, then moped forward and moved his face close to the sign, clutching his bread like a teddy bear, which it wasn’t surviving very well.

“It..- It says…” He stuttered, but I wasn’t having that.

“SAYS WHAT, PRIVATE? SORRY, I COULDN’T *HEAR* YOU OVER THE SOUND OF YOUR BITCHING!” I screamed, practically making the floor shake. He looked positively terrified by now, and even Aris looked taken aback.

“Itsaysthepipesarethatwayimsorryimsorry!” He cowered and covered his head with his hands.

“Great!” I said cheerfully. “Also, one last thing, private.”

“What?”

“I’m going to need your clothes, your boots, and your motor- I mean, your bread.”

. . .