Local Time: 7:48 AM | Earth Year 3252 | Planet: Queen’s Gate | City: Croxton Slums | New Sheehan Flat
A panting and sweaty Rory kicked open the door of their new flat, stepped through, and closed it behind him with his foot. He carried his unconscious mother’s body, which was over his shoulders, through the empty main room and into her room where he dropped her filthy mattress from the old place onto the floor in the corner from his ring, and then put her down gently. He placed a few pairs of somewhat clean clothes next to her “bed” and went to set up his own little corner of heaven.
To get them both out without anyone noticing, Rory had woken up an hour before the first bus, carried his mother’s unconscious body at a run to a transbus stop four miles away from their slum, and rode the earliest bus with her to the stop closest to his new apartment, carrying her up the thirty-three flights of stairs.
Needless to say, he was bloody thankful for the changes to his body. He would never have been able to do that otherwise. Upon reflection, he realized his original plan to run away from Mycroft and his debt would have been suicide. His old body could never have carried her.
With his mum settled, Rory placed a new thin but clean mattress he had bought for himself, dumped a bunch of old ratty clothes on it to hide its condition, ate leftovers from the city, and showered. Having a real shower with water that was almost warm was great and totally worth asking for. How showers were probably the only thing he missed about school.
Clean and calm for a bit, Rory lay down on his clean bed and then he went back to work researching. Despite the chaos from the prior morning, Rory had chosen to proceed with his plan to go into the city yesterday so he could eat and study.
It had not taken long for him to realize that he had made an error in regards to being able to watch vids in the shops. Thus he used the opportunity to upgrade his tablet and clothes while he was at it. He also picked up an earpiece. After that, he could watch vids with audio on the new fancy tablet wherever he wanted. As a side benefit, both the tablet and the earpiece connected to his commo ring, so he could listen to whatever on the earpiece and see his summary and the bestiary on his tablet as well.
By the time he had left the city, Rory recognized he had severely underestimated how much material there was on woodcraft, hiking, camping, and hunting. He was utterly clueless and there was so much to learn. And apparently pay for. He needed to learn about tents, carving tools, trapping, tracking, climbing, fire-making, cooking, and on and on. Heck, there were whole sections of material just on cleanliness and how to avoid certain illnesses.
He spent some time reflecting on what he wanted to spend money on and what he did not. As he was not exactly used to living in luxury, he could do with the minimum. At the same time, he didn’t want to die from lack of proper equipment either.
After two more hours of that, he heard his mum stir. By stir, he meant she rolled over and fell on the floor with a thump. Rory put everything in his ring, took out two bottles from the new local brewers, and walked into her room. He waited for her to recognize him.
She saw the bottles in his hands and crawled forward to get to them.
“Mum, I need to talk to you,” he said as he backed up a step. She ignored him and crawled after his retreating form – well after the bottles in his hands. “You can have them after you listen to me,” he said more loudly.
At that point, she looked up at him, blinking bloodshot eyes through filthy and tangled blond hair. “Mum, we had to move. We’re in a new flat. Do you understand me?” She blinked at him again. “I need you to tell me you understand. We had to move. We’re out of Wimbley and in Croxton.”
She sat back on her butt, her legs curled to the side. “You fuck up again?” came out in a gravelly voice.
“I’m trying to make things better for us. So we had to move. Hopefully, things will get better.”
She snorted. “It can’t get better. You only make thing worse. You’ll just fuck it up again. Cost me everything.” Then she leaned forward, shakily put her legs under her, and tried to push herself to her feet. Her skin-and-bone legs wobbled and shook the entire time. Rory stepped forward to help but she screamed wordlessly at him and swatted at his hands.
She finally managed to stand and floundered two steps forward to him. She poked him in the chest with her finger. “It’s your fault he’s dead,” she said hatefully. “They’re all dead. You killed everyone.” Closing her fist, his mother pounded his chest as she screamed, “It should have been you!” Pound, “It should have been you!” Pound. “You’re just a freak.”
Crying was accompanying the pounding by that point.
“He should have let you go!” Pound.
The next words came out as a wail. “Why, why, why?” each word accompanying a hit to his chest.
Rory said not a word the entire time, just watching his mother remind him of his guilt and pain.
Finally, she screeched, “I need this!” and she grabbed the bottles from his resistance-less hands, turned around, stumbled into bed, and pissed herself, already opening and downing one of the bottles.
Rory turned and left, not bothering to wipe the tears beneath his red eyes. He climbed into his bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking of the past as more tears fell down his face onto his new clean mattress.
***
Rory stood from his bed an hour later and left the silent apartment. Pushing at a hard run every step he wasn’t on a transbus allowed him to reach the serpent door just over an hour later. The strain on his body helped him clear his head and when he stepped into an open area of the jungle, he was a panting, sweaty mess. But the exertion allowed him to feel more in control.
Once inside, he returned to where he had last seen the rainbow snake. He then took a solid black globe about ten inches in diameter on a short M-steel stand out of his ring. Rory placed the device down, connected it to his tablet, and walked away.
Five minutes later he was sitting on a tree branch with one leg bent and one dangling, his tablet in one hand and the other pressing it. A moment later, thirty feet away, the jungle was alight with flashes of different colors as the light device appropriately named, “Party Time Strobe,” engaged. Using his tablet, Rory reduced the speed and brightness to closer match what he remembered from his interaction with the rainbow ferret snake and then waited.
Upon reflection, this seemed like an obvious idea, and one he was certain he wasn’t the first to come up with. It was the flower snake that had triggered the notion in him. The concept of luring a creature by what it does naturally was what had planted the seed.
These creatures loved to collect fancy things for mates. His hope was that a nice randy male would see the lights and think, “Ooooo, nookie!” assuming the globe was a female. Or alternatively, when he saw it was no snake lady but a shiny, he might think, “Ooooo, shiny! This can go in my pile and get me nookie!”
As for why this approach wasn’t on GalNet, most likely nobody wanted to give away a secret method to making big money. As in a healthy live specimen would bring in fifty thousand pounds big. That said, he had no idea if it would work. It all seemed logical to him, but who knew? Hell, there might not even be any more of the bloody things around. He doubted that though, given the one he had killed was only an adolescent.
While sitting there hoping for his globe bait to work, Rory spent the time continuing his research. Putting a hold on his camping research, he spent a bit of time learning what was available about basilisks. Lucifer’s species was absolutely fascinating to him, especially given what the molten skin was able to offer. He learned a bit about them, mostly confirming what the big snake had told him, but in the end he was disappointed with the lack of information.
Seems even the normal ones are rarer than I realized.
Not getting very far there, he changed the focus of his study onto enhancements for his armor, weapons, and body. He had very little understanding of them so, like he did with the armor, he started from the basics.
Information was everywhere on Soul Enhancements so he quickly learned that at a high level there were two kinds: those that offered temporary boosts and those that permanently altered someone or something. Within each of those categories, there were another two types, gear enhancements and body enhancements. Beyond that, it went into a million different variations, strengths, requirements, benefits, and side effects.
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The first Rory looked into was the Living Spring Line by the American Conglomerate’s Molecular Augmentations Corporation. All of the enhancements from that line could provide either temporary or permanent improvements. They offered a dozen different versions of enhancements. Some did nothing more than act as visual enhancement creams that improved the skin’s appearance and removed scars. Others were direct infusions that enhanced muscle fiber or bone density. There were even two that claimed to improve sexual performance, but their effectiveness was heavily debated on the forums. They also offered a permanent one that increases the size of man’s man-parts, but again effectiveness was debated. Honestly, he might think the whole thing was bullocks if he hadn’t personally experienced the changes himself. Not that he could prove it was the living tree that was responsible.
Anyway, the permanent enhancers were quite literally one hundred times as expensive as the temporary enhancers at least. It made sense he supposed. If one was planning a raid against a strong creature or nest or something similar, all the team needed was a quick affordable infusion at the right time and that big beastie wasn’t so scary anymore.
Relatedly, the Living Spring Line was known for not having any negative side effects, which was not the case for most temporary enhancements. Some enhancers that offered a sudden boost in strength had a downside of making the wielder quite weak for a period of time after use. They called that the “berserker.” That entire concept sounded super risky to Rory. What if you didn’t kill the scary whatever before the enhancer ran out? You’d be buggered when you became too weak to fight or run. Stupid in his mind. Even worse, some enhancers could only be used a certain number of times before the body was damaged or became resistant.
The entire concept of body enhancements made Rory feel like the best approach was to splurge on the really good stuff or he shouldn’t bother at all. The risk was just too high for the cheap temporary stuff.
Besides chemical improvements, there were also mechanical implants that augmented just about anything in regards to the body. The basics were heightened vision, hearing, and the like, while the more advanced were totally out there. People could change their appearance at will or temporarily increase their body size. The variety was endless. Some of those seemed particularly interesting – the most popular of which was the commo implant in the eye. Rory liked a lot of the available options, but didn’t think he’d do anything too drastic. The basics seemed useful to him as long as they didn’t conflict or overlap with his future armor.
As for equipment enhancers, that was a whole different kind of fascinating. The most popular by far were temporary enhancements for armor or Soul Defenders’ shields. That included resistances to specific elements. It turned out that above level 25, many creatures started to use elemental attacks. Lucifer had used death for example. Who knew what crazy level he had been though.
Other enhancements could be attached to the armor and would add capabilities. Of course, those were without the benefit of working with the original armor manufacturer and thus would void the armor’s warranty. But risks were part of hunting, Rory supposed.
One example that made him gawk and then drool with envy was a propulsion system that offered temporary flight capabilities. How bloody crazy was that? Different models offered different options, but Rory’s favorite came with wings that could be customized to look like different types of flying creatures.
They had three examples: one was white feathers, one was flesh and skin, and the third was just bone with no flesh at all. Given Rory’s death element, that last one really appealed. He remembered the vid from his only ghost class almost a decade ago and wondered if that was what Sir Michael had been using. Rory imagined himself whipping out bone wings as he used a death element skill and creatures fell before him. That would be Bad! Ass!
Of course, every single enhancement that Rory would consider was in the hundreds of thousands of pounds and rose into the millions for the best. And that was just at Tier 1 and 2. He wondered how people paid for that. How much were higher-level beast bodies worth? It had to be many times more than what he got, that was for sure.
Amidst his daydreaming, Rory heard a cracking and rustling from ahead. He took a few seconds to put the tablet into his ring and looked. What he saw was, disappointingly, not a rainbow snake, but a green snake with a pattern of brown diamonds on his back. He was way too far for an ID or to get a good interpretation of size, so he readied himself to move. The green snake slithered up to the light globe and poked at it with its tongue. It couldn’t seem to figure out what to do about it. It bobbed its head all around it, seeming to want to participate in a dance party.
Well, that was what the lights were for originally Rory supposed.
Just then he saw a disturbance in the woods to the left side of the clearing and a bloody rainbow snake slithered in. So distracted by the lights was the green snake, that it didn’t see the new partygoer until it was about ten feet away. It hissed harshly at the newcomer and Rory took that as a sign he should move into a position to take advantage of whatever was going to happen. As he was climbing down, he kept an eye on the ensuing conflict.
The rainbow snake rose up and started flashing in a familiar way. Rory was nervous at first, but he wasn’t taken in by it.
The distance maybe? Or maybe not…
Either way, the green snake didn’t seem hypnotized either as it rose and hissed right back while bobbing around. The rainbow snake changed its flashing pattern but the green snake’s only reaction was to open its mouth, show its fangs, and quickly lunge.
“I need that thing alive you wanker!” Rory growled. He leaped the last two feet and landed with bent knees. It wasn’t particularly graceful, but he didn’t fall on his face either. His chakram appeared in his hands and he sprinted at the pair.
Thankfully, the green snake’s lunge was more of a threat than an actual strike. That or it fell short. There was a bit of a back and forth, but neither snake had struck successfully by the time Rory got to the edge of the clearing. The green snake just kept bobbing and threatening while the rainbow snake silently flashed, although it was lower to the ground and had started to slither backward. The description of the species had said it ran more than fought. Rory decided to work his way around a little closer.
Apparently pleased with its dominance, the green snake rose higher and hissed harder. It froze its bobbing momentarily to do this and Rory chose that moment to strike. He threw his white chakram underhanded with a good amount of force and it streaked across the twenty-foot distance, slamming into the green snake.
It was bigger than Rory had thought from his perch back on the tree. Maybe thirty feet long and four inches around.
The white serpent chakram cut into the side of its body, just behind the head, and sunk in a few inches. The snake fell to the side and started thrashing. Its body and tail were swinging everywhere, sending the clearing’s debris flying in all directions. Rory backed up behind a tree to avoid being hit, which was good because the tree he was behind had just shuddered from a wild blow.
Of course, the rainbow snake saw the green snake’s condition and became a lot braver. It slithered forward, careful to avoid the thrashing tail, and struck when it felt some part was in range. It missed because of the jerking movements but seemed fine with it because it waited and tried again.
The third time was apparently the charm as its poisonous fangs ended up inside the green snake. That part stopped moving quickly and less than half a minute later, the green snake was still and the colorful reptile withdrew its mouth. Then it looked at the party light ball which had been flung to the side, completely forgetting about the green snake. It checked it out similarly to the previous snake, doing a number of circles and taste tests.
Rory watched as it opened its mouth and grabbed the flashy serpentine sex-globe. Then it turned back the way it had come and slithered off. Immediately Rory sprinted after, resummoning his chakram and following it.
He stayed a good distance but kept his eyes moving in search of flashing lights. Eventually, he followed it back to a hollow in the roots of a wide tree and watched as it slithered inside. Rory took from his ring a dark bottle that appeared to have a number of scarring lines all over it. He held it very gently in his hands and approached the hole. He saw flashing lights and stuck his head in.
The snake was arranging his nookie pile, which appeared to be four snakes, some sticks and leaves, a few shiny rocks, and now a flashing rainbow party ball as the centerpiece.
Rory entered as slowly and quietly as he could. Not long after, something beneath his left foot made a cracking sound and the snake whipped its head at him. Its own lights started to flash in a familiar pattern and Rory stared at it. It slithered closer, and he just stood there, watching.
When it reached four feet away and rose up, sure in its victory, Rory moved. He threw the bottle in his hand and it smashed against the colorful serpent. Smoke surrounded the snake’s head and it hissed whipping it left and right while Rory ran backward. Not two seconds later the snake thumped to the dirt, still as death.
Rory wiped his hands on each other and walked towards the downed creature, nodding to himself in confirmation that he had been correct. The globe disturbed the pattern enough that the hypnotism wouldn’t work. He had assumed that was why the green snake had not been affected either.
A one-foot cubed box fell to the ground from his ring in front of the snake and it grew to be a three-foot cube walled cage. Rory walked over the snake and dragged it in gently, a bit at a time. It curled up nicely with plenty of space. As soon as he closed it, the cage shrunk by half to match the size of the snake inside and turned black. Nodding, Rory turned to the pile, put the flashy ball to the side to provide illumination, and took out one of his new purchases, a thin butchering saw. According to his research, it would do less damage and equate to more profit.
***
Wiping off the blood and gore from the third of five (not four – one was curled in the back) snakes, Rory heard rustling from the entrance. Summoning his chakram, he ran and crouched tightly behind another snake, watching around a corner. Another one slithered in, its rainbow scales glistening. However, for this one, only the small diamond on top of its head was flashing through the rainbow as it approached the Globe of Sensuous Serpentine Solicitation. He was planning on naming it Gusss.
While the lady snake, for that was what the diamond on the head meant, flirted with Gusss, Rory swapped his weapons for his only other bottle of snake sleepy potion. He snuck around the snake, this time being careful not to step on anything loud. When he was in range he tossed the easily broken jar and it smashed against the snake.
Man, I’m so glad I listened to that nagging old woman and took two cages. Still, two snakes for the price of one trip in the big fake jungle… not bad, Rory.
Technically, Rory supposed Gusss should get the credit, but he’s a giving kind of chap and wouldn’t blame Rory for keeping the reward.