THE CRIMSON BITCH : LEVEL 13
DAY 234 : B-DAY, SECONDWEEK, HORUS, YEAR 1
CENTRAL 22 : CENTRAL DISTRICT 4 : ESCORT
At some point, I come to.
It’s tomorrow. Or a couple cycles later, depending on your perspective. Which, if you’re me… I got nothing.
So I just sit there. Having nothing. For an extended period of real time. Such a foreign concept after all these years…
Distantly, I even know why.
The Human mind wasn’t made to respawn that quickly. Or at all for that matter. But, discounting the ones on Earth, I mean the royal ‘human’. Which includes these non-human, non-peeing, non-perioding amalgamations that Heaven slapped our souls into.
But no matter how fresh or new my body was, I could feel my conscience breaking down towards the end there. I didn’t realize at the time that’s what was happening.
But, sitting here on the open street, as my mind slowly reassembles itself from me tearing it apart all night, it only becomes increasingly obvious that that’s what I was doing.
I have to force myself to breathe, without even knowing my next action. I’m just supposed to… Sit here? No… I’m supposed to leave. Right? It just feels so wrong to start a breath without knowing where it’ll end.
Belatedly, I notice I’m being carried. No… Not carried. Led. But where to?
Do I need to escape?
One of them just mentioned Darreck… So they know… Him… Are they in on it?
No… No one’s in on it but Darreck. Even if fucking Oneshot knew… I’m still not sure what to do with that. Not keep it going, obviously. But him having known… Having been the one to tell me… It’s disturbing to say the least.
As we board the train home, I silently celebrate being cognizant of where I am right now. It’s all been a blur since… The spawnpoint…
The two guys escorting me home are talking about something. At least it’s a distraction. I can use several of those right now…
The guy on the left looks over to the guy on the right. “So did you hear about the match yesterday?”
“The Adventurer’s Guild versus The Fire Nation?”
“Yeah… Did you catch it?”
“No.”
“Right… I guess we were both doing the same thing, huh?”
They both glance down at me.
Well, that’s not a very good distraction at all…
But then I remember… Long ago, I stopped paying attention to notifications. Even still, I couldn’t help noticing one in particular as it repeated with every death.
[ FINE RESOLVED: 64 USD — REASON: IN-CITY DASH ]
One of these isn’t a problem. Nor are two, ten, or even a hundred. The problem is that at some point, one word of every subsequent prompt changed.
[ FINE DEFAULTED: 64 USD — REASON: IN-CITY DASH ]
I gulp.
[ USD: 0 — ASD: 0 — BSD: 0 — CSD: 0 — DSD: 0 — ESD: 0 — FSD: 0 — GSD: 0 — HSD: 0 ]
I… Am I really… Broke?
But as I round the final turn, my entire body slumps. Such a cozy feeling. After all those years, I nearly forgot. I did forget…
But now I remember how it felt… I’m home.
I want nothing more than to march into my room, refuse to talk to anyone, and just deal with it in the morning. A week from now. However long it takes for me to sleep off my fight with Oneshot like a bad hangover.
Instead, I inhale deeply. Even if due to my affliction, it doesn’t make an outward difference.
Except that it lets me yell louder. “HEY, HAREM GUY!!!”
Everything is silent after that. Especially the two walking with me.
After gaping down at me for a moment, they look askance at each other before Darreck shows.
Which he does, opening the door to his villa at the top of the very stairs I’ve grown so familiar with these past months. “Come again?”
I growl. “Never. I’m leaving and you can’t stop me.”
Darreck’s eyebrows climb his entire forehead before the speech center of his brain seems to sputter back to life. “So you’re just going to… What? Leave everything here? Have these guys get your stuff for you?”
The two who brought me back look pensively at each other just like I know Darreck was counting on, before deciding they want no part in whatever this is and boning right out.
But this is still one of Central’s most affluent neighborhoods. And none of what’s happened already is particularly subtle. So we’ve got quite the audience. Nothing like what I just had with Oneshot, but also nothing to sneeze at.
For my part, I just shrug at his question. “No.”
[ RARE BED RETRACTED: BED OF SAND ]
Darreck’s eyes unfocus for a while. After said while, his amiable smile fades.
I fold my arms. “I’m leaving.”
He looks stricken, but composed. “Then leave. I don’t know where you got the idea that I was stopping you.”
Apparently called over by the noise, the rest of his harem shows up.
I nod in their direction. “And I’m taking them with me.”
Darreck shrugs. “It certainly is their right if they want to go anywhere with you.”
He glances around at the three of them. “So how about it? Should I leave you alone forever like she wants me to?”
Yellow replies first and loudest. “NO!!!”
But Green isn’t far behind on either front. “No!”
Blue shakes her head. Slowly at first. Then more fervently as she seems to fight back tears at the idea of being abandoned.
Shoulders slumping, Darreck moves to comfort Blue as he looks back at me. “And there you have it. Did you really think this through, Red?”
I feel a distant mental tug.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Are you sure you truly want to leave?”
The tug turns into a pull.
“Are you sure?”
What… What am I doing? Leave? Leave this comfortable life? Leave HIM? Why? It was all so clear a second ago. But… Why would I want to be anywhere else? Do I even have anywhere to go? And what if I did? So what if he-
I hold my breath.
Over the slow course of an instant, first in a trickle, then a flood, it all comes back to me.
But how am I still affected? I did the math, and it’s not even close. It’s been subjective years since I ran out the clock on all the stacks of whatever Debuff he had me trapped in. I felt that run out right along with my own mental stability. So why…
Before I quite realize what I’m doing, the button is already in my hands.
Darreck scoffs. “Oh, but you’ll still take my XP, though.”
I almost press it out of reflex. No… Not reflex. I’ve been dealing in enough of that lately to know the difference.
So instead of pressing it, my face contorts as I toss it up in the air. “Fuck…”
[ COMMON ACTION: IAI QUICKDRAW — INTENSITY: 130% ]
I throw my brightblade up after it while doing a pretty little twirl. “YOU!!!”
[ RARE TOGGLE ON: EXTEND-O-SWORD — INTENSITY: 203% ]
[ UNCOMMON ACTION: SPACIAL ANCHOR - SWORD — INTENSITY: 203% ]
[ COMMON ACTION: AURA BURST — INTENSITY: 203% ]
Teleporting to my sword mid-twirl, I take a couple minutes to catch the long-ass bendy stick, bring it around, and use my momentum in a baseball swing to send it veering across the city.
That same moment, the Force Damage from both of my other Skills launch the thing in nearly the same direction.
Then, I resheathe.
It doesn’t do any extra damage. I’m pretty sure the XP button can’t actually take damage. But it does make me feel better to smack the thing one last time, if only in spirit.
Oh, he didn’t like that…
Let’s see what else he doesn’t like.
“Hey Brown… Fuck, marry, kill, Green, Blue, Yellow.”
Oh he didn’t like that either.
Neither did Piss. “What is WRONG with you?”
But I only have eyes for Brown. “I guess that doesn’t really work anymore, huh? Not that it ever did. I mean if you marry someone, and you want to be monogamous, which most people do, including me… Then that option’s off the table for every subsequent round. So now you’ve gotta either fuck or kill everybody. Except you’re married. So fucking random people is cheating, even if it’s just to save their life. And with respawns, murder is really the lesser crime compared to cheating on your immortal spouse. So, once you marry someone, the natural choice is to just blindly kill everyone else you come across because you apparently can’t just let them go.”
Shit gestures emphatically as he walks down the stairs and tries to talk over me about some bullshit.
Deliberately ignoring whatever he has to say, I shake my head and try not to laugh at his shitty shit face… God I’m tired. “So never mind. Bad question. Hey, who’s your favorite though? Which of your three remaining harremites you lookin’ to fuck? All of them? Is that the goal? Or is this all just a trial run sort of thing? So what’ll it be? The cheerleader? The librarian? The wallflower? Or the fiery redhead? Oh, sorry, that flavor’s off the table now. How does that make you feel? Good? Probably good. One less choice means one less girl to… ‘Disappoint’ seems like too strong of a word-”
Finally reaching me mid-emphatic gesture, Darreck’s hand lands in the wrong place.
He looks embarrassed for a moment.
He almost lifts it back.
But then he notices the look on my face. And the fact that it shut me up.
He smiles differently than I’ve ever seen from him. Whatever face I’m making, it seems to put him on edge.
Almost absentmindedly, he squeezes. Not hard. Not even consciously from the looks of it. But enough.
The Mods appear. All of them. At once.
Where Darreck was just standing is a veritable cloud of wings, white clothing, and glowy effects that clearly weren’t meant to all be layered on top of each other like that.
Darreck starts to scream.
It cuts out mid-teleportation as he, and they, disappear.
All that’s left are the echoes of his voice, and one other unmistakably belonging to the only angel-equivalent I’ve ever talked to.
Sonic the Admin herself. “Oh my god, I am SO sorry.”
But, despite the remnant voice, she, and he, and they, are just gone.
[ DEBUFF LOST: DEVOTION ]
What? But I haven’t pressed the button in-
The world spins.
Regardless of what chicken laid what egg on that one, I fall over.
Yellow only falls to her knees. “You… Bitch… WHAT DID YOU DO???”
Right where Darreck was just standing, Civetta reappears in a flash of light and feathers, along with three other Admins.
They walk up the stairs while she just turns around. And apologizes. And explains. And apologizes.
She alternates between those two states while my head spins.
My consciousness comes back while she’s mid-explanation of her own apology.
“It’s technically not rape. It basically is. But… We have to allow for subterfuge. For Mental Debuffs to be used. And put into effect. Even… Even in more ways than any of us are comfortable with.”
She sighs. “It was never about sex with him. It would’ve been so easy if it was. But no. It was all about power. Not the kind that you used to pummel my husband yesterday.”
She smirks, holding her hand up for some reason. But slouches once I continue not to move. “Harem Guy’s whole thing was about keeping you in your place. And him in his, over you all. I think you diminished his perception of that power so much and so suddenly, that you got him to finally slip up and go for a different kind of relationship dynamic. One which is, as you may have guessed, very much against the rules.”
She punches her own open palm. “It’s about damn time that closeted rapist slipped… He skimmed just along the edge of the rules for so long. We all knew about him. Hated him, even. But until he broke one of those, we couldn’t touch him. We wouldn’t. But then he did. Truly… Thank you for that.”
Forget the respawns. Now, my mind feels like sludge. “Thank me… What’d I do?”
“You provoked him, of course.”
“But… I wasn’t trying to… To snitch…”
“Of course you weren’t. If you went in with that intention, you never would’ve done it. We tried to get Darreck to cross that line before. Today was the first.”
“What… There’s a line?”
Her expression softens once more. “But of course… That was quite a few mental Debuff stacks you removed all at once there. But suffice it to say, Admins have rules too. We all, every last one of us, wanted to stop that guy.”
“Oh… You’re welcome. What’s going to… Happen to… Him..?” It feels like my brain is falling apart in a totally different way than how it just reassembled.
“First offense is a warning. He won’t get banned. We care about the letter of the law. But we also care about the spirit. And with the right spirit, our warnings can be rather… Severe. Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t worry about seeing him any time in the next century. Maybe longer. Depends on what the council decides at his hearing.”
“H-hearing?”
“There’ll be a hearing. There’s always a hearing when a ban or significant prison time are in the offing. But the evidence is overwhelming. Whatever sentence he gets, I can promise you it won’t be short. And to that end, in light of everything that’s happened, consider your restrictions lifted.”
“W… Restrictions…”
“Oh, nothing you’ve run up against. Your CLASS doesn’t have much that can natively violate them, let alone at a rarity you can currently access. No breath-based summoning, golemcraft, drones, or other automatons that could exacerbate the System energy your breathing takes by adding another source.”
“Oh… I…”
“Not to worry. Lifting them is both the most and least I can do. We can’t give out Items, Equipment, or anything like that. The only reason we could offer you a Skill last time, was in exchange for giving up another one. Only due to extenuating circumstances, mind you. Even then, I couldn’t have granted anything you wouldn’t unlock given time.”
She looks hesitantly over at the other Admins dealing with my… Were we ever really friends? “Now, I don’t necessarily approve of this justification, but on behalf of my co-workers… Thanks for killing my husband.”
[ ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE: RESTRICTIONS LIFTED ]
Civetta hugs me one more time.
Some time later, she lets me go, puts me down, and scooches me closer to Yuki as we sit together on the floor, stunned.
When did we get upstairs..?
At the same time as two more Admins finish seeing to the others, Civetta apologizes as she vanishes one last time.
And then there’s silence.
Except for the sobbing.
At some point, I summon the courage to look Blue in the eye. No, Yuki… I look Yuki in the eye.
She looks back.
We say nearly the same thing at nearly the same time. “Are you still my friend?”
Then we burst into tears. And hug. For a while.
We hold each other through the world as it crashes down around us. Just hugging. Just human contact. Nothing more, nothing less.
We fall asleep like that.