(Strive 11:4)
Piña coladas from the resort’s breakfast bar helped wash the cloying taste of advancement pills from my mouth. My strength was now at Mediocre, and my dexterity at Una poca de gracia, courtesy of a steady diet of Swedish Fish looted from Moby Dicksicle the ice whale. My magic continued to hover at Unacceptable, since I always passed those pills to El.
“What’s with the level names?” I asked Selene, wrapping kalua pig and loco moco in banana leaves and stowing them in my inventory. “It’s like they’re all insults.”
“Sender’s sense of humor.” She piled rice noodles onto a plate. “People usually don’t go by those. If you’re being technical, people will use decimal RGB. Otherwise, gem-names are more common.” She glanced at my bracelet before turning around to sit down. “I’d say yours is 20-20-5. Brimstone. El’s looks about 5-5-25, azurite.”
“Still,” I insisted, “the official names are the weird ones, right?”
Selene shrugged. “He may have created the system, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have our own interpretations. The question is, what aspects of it are useful to us?”
“As expected of a heathen savage,” muttered Artem. “No respect for the creator. Oy!”
El swiped a roll from Artem’s plate and ran outside, chittering. I rubbed my eyes. It was barely dawn, and the last five digits of my epoch timer were just over twenty thousand. Doing some mental arithmetic, that meant we’d slept less than three hours. Well, I reminded myself, we’re not on vacation here.
“So what’s your strength at, Artem?”
He paused. “It’s Nothing to write home about.”
“Seriously?”
We finished our meal and packed up, which meant stripping the place bare of anything that’d fit in our inventories. The arcade machines wouldn’t go in, but the decorations and towels did, as well as ample food and drink and our winnings from the arcade, mostly a large haul of stat candies.
“Keep some health bars and refreshing drinks on hand,” Selene said. “Easier access.”
“I’m not a kangaroo,” said El. “No pockets, unfortunately.”
Luckily for us, the supplies from Shinar included a couple straps and bits of cloth, and Artem was able to fashion a makeshift holster that fit around a raccoon-sized waist. El was able to carry a few items this way, and to my surprise, took to it rather well, carrying them around like a little backpack.
“Man, I wish I had my phone camera,” I said. “This would do numbers on social media.”
“Piss off.”
“My reading had the next floor’s entrance slightly northeast of here, at a substantial elevation,” said Selene. “It should be up the cliffside by the waterfall.”
“Let’s roll out, then,” said Artem.
“Aye-aye, captain.”
We set off in the direction she pointed, Artem in front, followed by Selene, with me and El taking up the rear. All of us chewed on various candies as we went. Mine was an Atomic Fireball, since I was trying to push my way to the Power Strike skill.
The path upward was steep and winding, one side exposed to a long drop with jagged rocks below. We tried to advance slowly and steadily, but it still felt sketchy as hell. Once, during the climb, I slipped on a patch of moss and almost fell, taking El with me. She decided to give me more space after that.
As we walked, I spent some time testing Purgator’s new capabilities. Last night’s practice had improved my aim somewhat. Back then, I was missing more shots than I was hitting, even on stationary objects. But now, after a few attempts, I managed to stick a seagull in midair. It dragged the line around like a kite until I flipped the safety to the Release position and let it flap away, squawking indignantly.
It was midday when we came upon the chasm. Artem and Selene waited for us at a ledge where a rockslide had demolished a good chunk of the path, leaving a gap where the cliff plunged down to the sea. Artem eyed the far side, a good thirty feet away.
He thrust his hand into a series of gestures, and his bracelet flared crimson as he slowly knelt down into a racer’s starting position. He was going to use Power Strike on his legs, I realized.
Without warning, Artem exploded off the ledge, tearing chunks of rock away from the cliff. He hung above the gap for a moment before coming down in a roll on the other side. Pebbles tumbled down to the surf below.
“I could make that easy,” said El.
“No you couldn’t. But maybe I can.” I backed up a few steps and unholstered my plunger. “I’m going to try something.”
Eyeing a rocky outcropping above, I fired the cup. It stuck, and the trailing rope went taut. I leaned back experimentally, letting the line take my entire body weight, but Purgator held fast. I jumped up and down vigorously, and the plunger never moved.
“I don’t know about this one,” said Selene.
“Me neither,” I responded, and jumped.
Wind rushed past my face as I swung through the air like a janitorial Spiderman. Don’t look down, I told myself. Don’t fucking look down. I pinwheeled my feet for what seemed like an eternity until they met solid rock again, then retracted the plunger. It snapped back to me, jarring my hand.
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I was across.
Artem stood next to me, eyeing me with what seemed like slight respect. Or alarm. “That was the biggest risk for the smallest reward I’ve ever seen.”
“Says the jumper.” I gave him a grin slightly crazed with adrenaline. “How long do you think we’d have been stuck here if I shoved candies down my throat till I unlocked Power Strike?”
Artem grunted, then jerked his head over at El and Selene on the far side. “What about them?”
Images of Tarzan and Jane clouded my head for a minute before I dismissed them. Hefting the plunger, I aimed it at El. "No worries. I have an idea for this one, at least."
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"This is fucked up," El complained, dangling above the abyss. Magic candies spilled out of her harness as she slowly rotated.
"Sorry," I said, “but this is the only way." I hoisted the raccoon up, and she scrabbled onto the solid ground.
Selene called something, but her voice was too quiet to hear. She repeated herself.
“What is she saying?” I asked.
“She says ‘tightrope,’” Artem rumbled.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s actually a good idea—ow! El, what the fuck?”
El released her teeth from my ankle. “Maybe do a little brainstorming next time before sticking me with the dirty plunger. I know exactly where that thing’s been.”
“My bad,” I said, firing the cup at Selene’s side of the gap. She picked it up and pressed it down to the rock, stepping on it a few times to ensure it held fast. I walked backwards until the rope went taut. “Artem, can I get some help holding this thing?”
Wordlessly, he grabbed the rope and pulled back, and we watched as Selene pulled a long pole out of her inventory for balance. She made her way across elegantly and hopped onto our side, before I had a chance to realize that a towerquake at that moment could’ve been disastrous.
Further walking brought us to a place where the wall of rock on our left fell away, turning our path into a thin ridge like a dragon’s spine. Dry brush and craggy rock shot down steeply to water on either side. The sky was painterly with pinks and oranges to the west and blues and grays to the east.
I noted that I wasn't breathing heavily at all. I hadn't been particularly fit before the tower climb, but even with my strength stat sitting at Mediocre, a steep multi-hour hike felt like a walk in the park.
The calls of the seagulls and the ocean breeze made everything feel strangely peaceful. Things were simpler here in Strive. Yes, there were homicidal bookbats and giant enemy crabs, but those were simple problems, in a sense. Hit them with a stick enough times and they went away.
Lost in daydreaming, I stumbled over a rock, and something whizzed past me, right where my head had been. It splatted behind me, and I caught a whiff of coconut.
“Shields,” cried Artem, and I ran forward before thrusting my hand into the six signs that would surround me with flames.
Another coconut slammed into me, cracking on my aura. It smelled amazing for a moment as it toasted, then burned. Looking up, I saw a monstrous palm tree the size of a redwood, swaying back and forth unnaturally as it flung the heavy fruits down at us like cannonballs. A face on the tree’s trunk blinked at me with a surprised expression, as if astonished I’d blocked the attack.
As I advanced, the palm began pelting me with a machine-gun barrage of coconuts that pushed me back with its sheer volume. Each nut burst against me, showering me with juice in a way that felt somewhat not-safe-for-work.
A sharp series of cracks signaled that El had arrived, but her Firecrackers went wide, missing the tree. I turned back to see Artem shielding Selene, while a stream of purple light—black in my red-filtered vision—connected them. But they were pinned down; it wasn’t like Artem could abandon our healer to go on the offensive. With a pang of sadness that felt out of place in battle, I realized that my burning shield could never be used to protect others. Even now, El was out in the open unguarded, hopping back and forth to dodge stray coconuts.
What I could do was try to end things quick. I summoned Purgator and fired it at the tree, but the cup was knocked astray by a well-aimed coconut. Gritting my teeth, I retracted it and fired again. This time, the tree leaned out of the way of my shot, and it landed in the bushes behind it.
“Motherfucker,” I said, yanking the rope back. “Stay still, you sorry excuse for a tree.”
El shot a series of explosions that made the palm focus fire on her for a bit, and that gave me the opening I needed to land a plunger shot with a satisfying thunk. I jumped at the tree and yanked Purgator toward me. The momentum of the retracting rope slingshotted me forward as the world blurred past.
I smashed through the trunk and burst out the other side in a shower of splinters, leaving behind a me-shaped hole. “Oh, yeah,” I cried, landing on the ground. “Shit, that felt amazing—”
The entire remaining crop of coconuts fell on top of me as the tree shook them off in its death throes. It was too much for my shield to bear, and the aura winked out as exhaustion and burning coconuts buried me.
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Muffled voices came through a pile of coconuts, before a pinhole of light appeared. A flash of purple light peeked through, and I felt soreness and pain vanish. But I still had no energy to move, and I had to wait until a pair of thick arms reached in and yanked me out.
I rolled over onto my back, then choked as refreshing liquid was poured down my throat. “Okay, okay, I’m good,” I sputtered, turning away from Artem’s stream.
“You don’t look good,” Selene said.
“That hurts,” I said. “Looks-wise, I’d consider myself at least a seven out of ten.”
“Not with that coconut shell on your head,” she replied.
I laughed, brushed it off, then coughed again. Was that humor? From Selene, of all people? “Well, at least we know how to turn off my shield without the explodey side effect,” I said. “I just need to run myself completely dry and pass out. That was a joke, Artem.”
Artem had a thoughtful look on his face I didn’t like. “Harden doesn’t consume energy passively, but your variant must, to give off so much heat. Even though the human body stores over a hundred thousand calories of energy, the kada system only has access to some of it. Prevents things like ketoacidosis. So burn through your allotment, and there’s no more energy left to combust. What?”
I was staring at Artem.
“I was a doctor before.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “And Master Shaw always emphasized a well-rounded education.”
“Fainting is not a strategy,” I said firmly. “That’s even worse than exploding. Let’s move before this tree tips over on us.”
The palmón—that’s what the udjat called it, anyway—was almost fully blackened, with the me-shaped hole still burned through the center of it. Some of the coconuts had spilled stat-augmenting candies instead of juice, and we took a moment to loot these before moving to the other side, where a cliff awaited. A barrel hovered a few inches off the ground, pointing into the horizon.
Twelfth floor barrel was the description, and I had a distinct feeling this mode of transportation was cribbed from Donkey Kong Country. That meant I knew exactly what to expect when the barrel launched me into the sky, and I definitely didn’t scream like a little girl.