It took them a couple of hours to reach the sporting goods store in which they stopped every hour or so to rest, drinking some water and having some jerky. They ran into a group of monsters that were interested in them, but their running away plan worked perfectly. Most of the monsters they saw were trying to capture zones. They avoided these as much as possible as well. They weren’t ready yet to take on a zone. They didn’t have a complete team. That and they wanted to capture zones near where Nathan and his crew were capturing zones. Then hopefully they could merge them or at least be neighbors.
They noticed a weird building that wasn’t Earth made. It was painted purple like the monsters. The color was too similar to be a coincidence. Brian and Chris wondered if it might be a dungeon. They left it though as definitely weren’t in any kind of position to take on a dungeon.
They arrived at the sporting goods store. It had obviously been hit by looters, but the shelves still had a lot of merchandise left. Brian spoke up, “Ok so first we are looking for flashlights. After that, wagons. Then we will split up, each of you grab a cart. Heather, you can come with one of us if you want. We are looking for specific things. We want camo, any and all food items, ammo, knives, hatchets, tents, sleeping bags, and any type of foam mattress. Any compound bows and all arrows. I’m going to grab guns and some fishing stuff. I don’t know where we will be able to fish, but I’d rather get the stuff now than not be able to get it later. After that I’m going to grab some specific things. Oh grab a decent amount of clothing we will want it for later. And see if you can find some hiking backpacks. The kind that distributes the weight better so it’s easier to walk. We will likely find ourselves in positions where we need to carry a decent amount of stuff with us and that will make it so much easier. ” They spent the next hour “shopping”.
Unfortunately some others had the same idea. Heather had followed Brian, when they heard shouting further on down the store.
Brian turned to Heather, “Stay here. Keep out of sight. I will go see what’s going on. Brian ran off to see what the commotion was.
He found Chris inside one of his shields, a wagon full of stuff next to him. While two dirty men in clothing that had obviously been worn since the initialization. One had a long knife in his hand and the other had a Glock. The guy with the knife ineffectually pounded on the shield and was cursing up a storm.
Brian raised his SIG and called out, “All right that’s enough. I’m sure there is more than enough stuff for all of us that we don’t need to resort to stealing from each other.”
The two men whirled around. The gun wielder raised his gun and aimed it at Brian. “He’s got a lot of ammo and food. We just want our fair share. Give it to us and no one needs to get hurt.”
Brian looked at Chris, “Did you clean out the shelves?”
“Yeah. I grabbed everything. I didn’t know what bullets to grab so I grabbed them all. That and all the food I could get.”
“All right. Look through the ammo and grab 5 boxes of 9mm, and then grab some food. Toss it out through the shield.”
Gunman sneered, “That’s nowhere near enough. We’ll take most of it, and you can have what’s left.”
“Yeah that’s not going to happen. You can take what we give you and be happy about it. Or you can walk out the door with nothing. Take it or leave it.” Brian noticed that Nick had arrived. Nick didn’t want to scare the gunman into shooting Brian so he carefully decided to sneak over so he could get in between Brian and the other two men.
“Why don’t we just kill you and him and take it all?”
Brian had to be careful. He had two aces in the hole. Heather could heal him, although probably not from a head wound. Although it didn’t look like this guy was aiming at his head. That and Nick’s invulnerability meant he could likely walk away from this unhurt. He just had to survive whatever abilities these two had. But they hadn’t used them on the shield so maybe luck would be with him and they didn’t have any offensive abilities. “You can probably kill me, but I’m taking you down with me. So in the words of famous cop, ‘Do you feel lucky punk?”’
That was a mistake.
Something about Brian’s statement seemed to trigger something in the gunman. He cursed and fired at Brian. Two bullets hit Brian in his chest. Being hit by a bullet has been described as fire shooting through your insides. Brian decided in that movement, that unless you had been shot before. You didn’t have a clue about the kind of pain you felt. Lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it, Brian had felt pain before. Fibro can leave you in so much pain that all you want to do is die. These experiences enabled Brian to focus and fire back at the gunman. He was able to fire three shots in rapid succession. Firing like that takes plenty of practice. The first few times Brian had fired like that the second and third shots barely hit the two foot target. But he had kept working at it and all that practice paid off when all three shots hit the gunman.
Both Brian and the gunman went down. The knife wielder rushed towards Brian to finish him off. He never got there. An energy beam hit him in the back and he went down. Chris managed to hold it together long enough to yell out for Heather before he lost the contents of his stomach.
Heather arrived after a few moments and quickly rushed over to Brian. She quickly activated Targeted Heal on one of the bullet wounds. The wound started closing up, luckily the bullet had gone through Brian’s back and so they wouldn’t have to dig around to find it. After several seconds that seemed longer than they were, the first bullet wound healed up. Unfortunately that put Targeted heal on cooldown. Heather quickly activated Mass Heal there was no visible healing, but the blood wasn’t flowing as fast. Chris came over and activated Must Go Faster shaving ten minutes of the cooldowns.
By this time Nick had appeared at Brian’s side. “Why did you have to antagonize them? I could have taken a couple of bullets with my invulnerability.”
Brian choked on his words, “Yeah, that was stupid. Definitely paying the price for it now. Man this hurts. Next time I’ll let you get shot.”
Nick wryly noted, “That’s generous of you.”
“You’ll find I love to share.”
“Shut up both of you. This is no time for jokes.”
Chris spoke up, “Man am I glad you decided to come with us. This would have gone a lot worse if you hadn’t decided to come.”
The timer on Targeted Heal came up and Heather activated it. But before she could heal Brian fully she gasped and slumped over.
Both Chris and Nick gasped in fright, “What’s wrong with her?”
Brian was mostly recovered, but still had a trickle of blood coming out of the wound. He sat up. She’s fine. She’s Mana Drained. If you activate too many abilities in a short time, or I imagine if you hold a continuous ability too long you run out of the energy that the abilities use. You get a status effect called Mana Drain. You feel very weak for several minutes. Nate got it the first time we fought monsters together. He activated all of his abilities very quickly. Actually both of you will want to test how long you can hold your shield and invincibility for, so you don’t have this happen to you in the middle of a fight. Nick rather than just waiting here, why don’t you go grab the wagons and bring them over here. We can get out of here as soon as Heather is back on her feet and can finish my healing.”
Nick got up to do so. Brian managed to get to his feet. He walked over to the two men and rifled through their effects. They didn’t have much, the only things useful were the Glock and the knife. The knife had seen better days and so Brian left it behind. He did put the Glock in his cart as someone could use it later. He walked over to Chris, “I forgot to mention earlier. Thanks for taking out the knife guy. I know you aren’t much for violence, so you doing it in spite of that. It’s something I’m really grateful for.”
“I couldn’t let you die. But hopefully that was the only time I needed to do that.”
Brian said nothing. He doubted that would be the only time they might need Chris for offense, at least until they got some more damage dealers.
Nick had brought over the mostly full carts before Heather had fully recovered. After she recovered she quickly healed Brian. They had gotten almost everything Brian had on his list. The only thing that they hadn’t got was two way radios. Brian had tried a few, but none had worked. Brian didn’t know why flashlights worked, but they didn’t. If I ever meet the aliens who did all of this, boy have I got some questions for them.
They pushed the wagons towards the exit. Brian slowly popped his head out of the exit, looking to see if anybody was waiting for them to exit. He didn’t see anyone. He motioned for the others to head out. They hooked up the wagons to the bikes with straps for towing. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would work for now.
Brian climbed on his bike. “Ok so the range is a few miles away from here we should be able to make it in a little over an hour. Then we will rest for a while, and after that start testing abilities. We won’t have enough time to make it back to Beaverton tonight to either mine or Nick’s place. So we will sleep there tonight. Sound good.”
Heather sighed, “Not really, but I guess it’s fine.”
Brian chuckled. “You are going to have to get used to roughing it. Even after we capture some zones we are going to have to build shelters for people. You’ll be sleeping in tents with sleeping bags for at least a few months.”
“Yay.”
Brian continued chuckling at the sarcasm. The quartet set off. It was slow going. The wagons were far from the most stable or easy to move things. They had to go at about a quarter speed to keep everything moving and not cause any tip overs or crashes. Brian kept a close lookout for threats. They wouldn’t be able to run away from any threats now.
They managed to make it to the range without any major problems. Monstrous creatures were by far the threat that populated the world. Brian wondered if every region had only one intelligent species that would seem to fit with how relatively sparse their encounters with them had been. If that was the case did that mean he and Nathan had taken out the group for some part of Aloha. Something to investigate at a later time. Too many things on his plate as it was.
The range was untouched by the violence that had descended on the world. Brian and company stopped in front of the double door entrance. “I don’t suppose any of you know how to pick a lock do you?”
No one volunteered. Luckily the doors had a long pane of glass in the middle. Brian pulled out a smithing hammer. It wasn’t ideal for the situation, but it should work. “Back up.”
Nick reached out and stopped him, “Why don’t I do that? You can’t make yourself impervious like I can.”
Brian quickly agreed with Nick’s point, and handed over the hammer. Chris made a shield to protect Brian, Heather, and himself. Cris activated I am Invincible (advanced) “User becomes impervious. Cooldown fifteen minutes.” He stepped in front of the door and took a big swing. The laminated glass didn’t shatter and fall apart like in the movies. Rather the coating held the broken pieces together. Nick squared his shoulders and took several swings. A small hole formed in the glass. Nic kept hammering the hole until it was big enough to reach his arm into and turn the deadbolt on the door. He pulled his arm out and opened the door.
The quartet entered the range with the bikes and carts. Brian looked around. There didn’t seem to be anything heavy they could put in front of the door to barricade it. That sucked. That meant this was going to get a lot harder.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“All right you all have a flashlight spread out and see if you can find something we can barricade this door with. I know no one has been by yet, but I don’t like gambling with my life if I can help it.
After a decent search everyone reconvened near the entrance. Nobody found anything they could use to effectively barricade the door.
Brian rubbed his temples. “Ok so this just got a lot more complicated. We can do this one of two ways. Either we take the chance that no one is going to come by and we can all be in the shooting bay or we can take turns testing our abilities and someone out here watching the door. Heather, we've seen how your abilities work so we don’t need you in the bay, at least not unless someone gets injured.”
“Is that likely?”
Brian equivocated with a drawn out, “Maybe. We are going to be shooting guns and bullets will be flying next to bodies.” He didn’t plan on telling her that he would really like to know how invulnerable Nick was and how effective the blades were at intercepting attacks. And if Nick was down he planned to shoot him in the foot with his pistol and rifle. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. Because she was definitely not giving permission.
Heather was not buying it. “Uh huh. Somehow I don’t believe you.”
“I promise nothing life threatening. And we will be as safe as we can.”
Heather stared for a long moment at Brian, “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel good.”
Taking that as permission Brian pointed to the wall where several over the head earmuffs for protecting one's hearing were displayed, “All right everyone grab one of those. Grab some safety glasses from over there. Heather, stay nearby, but out of sight of the door. If someone tries to enter, put on your ear muffs and run over to the range and let us know. Chris, Nick we are going to test some things and then Chris you can join Heather.”
The boys put on their hearing protection and eye protection and walked down the hallway to enter the range. Inside the range Brian raised his voice so he could be heard, “Ok Chris I am going to have Nick take my pistol, walk out onto the range and go near the wall. I want you to make a shield so that it is short of the wall. Nick you are then going to activate your invulnerability, point the gun at a low angle towards the wall and shoot it. We need to know if we can fire bullets from inside the shield.
The two did as they were instructed. Chris activated Shield Up Nick activated I am Invincible, gave a quick prayer and pulled the trigger. The bullet passed through the shield and struck the wall.
Brian motioned Nick back and when he arrived took off his hearing protection. The other two did the same. “That was perfect. We now know we can shoot from inside of the shields that will be way safer. Nick, next we need to test your blade barrier. Go out a little ways and activate your blade barrier. Then when you are ready activate your invulnerability. And I will shoot near you and see if the blades block the bullet. Chris when he gets out there activate a shield so we don’t have to worry about ricochets.”
Nick walked out ducking under the wooden benches suspended from the ceiling. He tried to calm his racing thoughts. It wasn’t every day you stood by and let someone shoot at you with guns. But it was fine. He could do this. Everything was ok.
After several minutes Nick activated Blade Barrier (average) “Several blades circle the user. They block attacks and attack any enemy who gets inside of its range. A sword is lost upon block or attack. Duration ten minutes or when blades run out. Cooldown thirteen minutes.”
Chris activated Shields Up. Nick activated I am Invincible then gave a thumbs up. Brian aimed just past Nick and squeezed the trigger. A sword moved in front of the bullet, deflecting it, then the sword winked out of existence. Brian holstered his pistol and aimed his rifle in the same spot. He squeezed the trigger. Amazingly the sword blurred it moved so fast and deflected the bullet. Again the sword winked out of existence.
Brian waved Nick back. Nick canceled Blade Barrier and came back to the other side of the benches.
“Ok so now we need to test your construct. Chris, do the cooldown thing then when you can let me know. I am going to have you put up a shield. Nick make a construct as close to the wall as you can. And then we are going to test it.”
“How are you going to test it?”
“I’m going to shoot it once with the pistol and then with my rifle. Then we will do it again with my rifle only.”
“What happens if my construct explosion is too powerful?”
“That’s what the shield is for, also I don’t think it will be too powerful. Most people wouldn’t be able to use a shield and would need to survive the explosion. It shouldn’t go much past 20 feet.”
Chris piped in, “That’s a big assumption.”
“Eh, we also need to know how much damage your shield can take anyway, so win-win.”
Nick shook his head, “Heather’s right you are crazy.”
“It’s a calculated risk, but I am 99% sure we’ll be fine.”
“And the other one percent?”
“Lucky we have a healer on hand.”
“She is so not going to be with us anymore.”
“Just don’t tell her what we did.”
Chris shook his head, “She’s going to hear the explosion dude.”
Brian lifted his arms in a ‘What are you going to do gesture’.
The other two men were not happy. The men put back on their hearing protection. Nick activated Tanks Friend (Rare) “User creates a construct. The construct attracts monsters to attack it. Special once it has received enough damage the construct explodes. Duration: Seven minutes or takes enough damage to explode. Cooldown sixteen minutes.”
A construct appeared near the wall. Chris activated Shields Up. Brian aimed at the construct which looked like a wooden melee weapon practice dummy and pulled the trigger. The construct wobbled a little from the impact, but did nothing else. Brian holstered his pistol, grabbed his rifle, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The first shot only wobbled the creature more as did the next two. The fourth shot however was different.
The construct exploded with a loud boom. The wall didn’t seem to have taken any damage.
Brian took off his hearing protection, “Ok, I think that’s all we can really find out about your construct. We will just have to wait and see how much damage it takes from monsters later.
Heather burst through the door and yelled, “What the frell was that?”
Brian raised his hands, “Easy. Everything is fine. That was Nick’s construct exploding. And before you ask we were all behind one of Chris’s shields so we were perfectly safe.”
That brought Heather up short. She had been sure something stupid and dangerous had happened when she heard the explosion. “All right then. Warn a girl next time.”
“Chris, now we just need to know how long you can hold a shield. Why don’t you and Heather go out and test that near the front door. That explosion might have been loud enough to attract some attention. So wait 15 minutes then test, use one mississippis for your counting.”
Heather and Chris exited the bay. Brian waited a minute until they were gone. “Ok so this last part is actually dangerous. And if you don’t want to do it. We won’t do it.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
“I want to test how invulnerable you are. I would like, no, like is not the right word. I plan on shooting you in the foot with the pistol, and then with the rifle. Hopefully neither one damages you and we never need to tell anyone, especially Heather, we did this. If you get hurt, we have Heather heal you and then she can chew me out.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you want to know how much damage you can take, what if it’s only one stab or strike with a blade? And you think you are ok to take the next one and you don’t move and they get you. I would want to know how invulnerable I am. Like I said if you don’t want to we don’t have to. It’s your choice.”
Nick paused. What did he want to do? He definitely didn’t want to get shot. But Brian brought up an interesting point: what if he thought he was good to take another blow and he wasn’t. Better to know now than in the heat of the battle. “Oh this is going to suck.”
Brian couldn’t refute that. Nick walked back under the wooden benches. “Do it quick before I lose my nerve.” He activated I am Invincible. Then braced for the pain.
Brian pulled out his pistol, aimed at the meat of Nick’s foot, and fired. The bullet ricocheted off his foot, flew up to his shin and ricocheted off again. Nick was ecstatic. He could take a gunshot without getting hurt. This was amazing. In his excitement he let go of I am Invincible. He noticed Brian aiming with his rifle and stopped him. Brian lowered the rifle, “What’s up? You don’t want to do the rifle?”
“No, we can do the rifle. I accidently let go of the ability so it’s now on cooldown.”
“Oh. Yeah good you stopped me. I don’t want to hurt you. I just don’t want your ability failing at the wrong moment.”
“No, I get it. Why aren’t we testing any of your abilities?”
“I’ve already used mine. Well the two that would have needed to be tested anyway. The other is obvious in how it works.”
“What abilities do you have again?”
“I can summon a gun with various properties, like fire, ice, electricity etc. Then I can throw out an explosive. It’s kind of like a grenade, except all energy, not something physical. And then I can convert bullets to fire bullets. We will need to when we get the team all together to tell each other what all we can do.”
“That last one seems kind of redundant, with the gun you can summon.”
“Yeah, but it’s something with which I can convert other’s bullets as well. It’s not the greatest, but I’m cool with it.”
“So who else do you have for the team?”
“There is a lady named Jessica, we met her at your complex actually. She can go invisible, doesn’t leave any trace that she moved through a space, and her arrows can do more damage. And then we need at least one more focused damage dealer. That and a healer since Heather doesn’t want to really do this.”
Nick nodded and the two lapsed into silence while they waited for Nick’s cooldown to run out. When it did they started the procedure again. This time with Brian’s rifle instead.
Unfortunately, while the initial hit from the rifle was deflected. The ricochet was not. The bullet bounced up as Nick’s ability was broken and the bullet struck his shin and embedded itself in Nick’s leg. Nick fell down screaming.
Brian dropped his rifle and ran to get Heather. He found her and Chris talking, “Heather come quick. Nick got shot.”
“What do you mean Nick got shot? I thought you weren’t going to do any dangerous stunts.”
“Heal now. Yell later.” Brian grabbed Heather and pulled her along towards the bay.
Heather knelt next to Nick and assessed the situation as she activated her Targeted Heal ability. The nature of the healing worked by healing the end of the injury and working to the beginning. This meant that just before Nick was fully healed the bullet popped out of the wound and clattered to the floor.
Heather might have finished healing Nick, but she was far from done. “You shot him intentionally. What is wrong with you? I said no more stupid stunts. But no, it seems because you have a healer you think you can do anything you want. Well this is it, when we get back to the McMullen’s house you are going to need to find another healer. Cause I quit.”
Brian was calm now that the wound was healed. “I’m not doing all of this stuff for kicks. I didn’t slice my hand open cause I thought it would be fun.”
Nick was incredulous, “You sliced your hand open. Dude.”
“Not right now. I am doing this because I want to fight to protect people. And doing that means utilizing everyone’s powers. Except we don’t know how any of these powers work. We are given a brief description and that is it. So that means we test here relatively safely, or we test out there when it’s real.” He pointed to the outside world. “What if your ability failed in the middle of a fight, when someone stabbed you or sliced you open with a sword or axe? Yeah this sucks. Did we forget I got shot today too. I know how much this sucks. But now you’re fine. If this had happened in a real battle where your ability failed it could have meant your death.”
Brian stood up, “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but now we know your powers have a breaking point. It’s not just a matter of you canceling it. We know we can hide inside Chris’s shields and shoot out of them. And we know we can’t rely on you being able to heal our wounds faster than they can accumulate. Healing during the fight is going to be very difficult at best. That means rotating out to be healed and keeping the enemy off the healer and their patient is something we are going to have to figure out how to do.”
He turned back to the others, “If you guys are going to stick around rotating the construct, then the invulnerability, then shields and so on. All of those things will save our lives. And we found out when no one was attacking us, when we had all the time to heal. I am not crazy. I am not stupid. The rules of life have changed. We must change with them or we will die.”
He slowly wound down his speech, “I proved I was willing to take one for the team to see how this all works. I’m lucky all my abilities work like they say on the tin. But healing, the invulnerability, even the shield they all had various ways they COULD work. Now we know conclusively. I’ve said it from the beginning, and I guess I’ll have to continue saying it. No one is forcing you to do this. This is strictly volunteer. Tomorrow you can all opt out. If you are going to stay. Then you need to know this is dangerous. People will die doing this. I am willing to take that risk. I want to protect people. That’s why I am doing all of this. What do you want? And what are you willing to risk? Take tonight to think about it.” With that Brian left.
No one felt much like talking. They all grabbed a sleeping bag and foam mattress and claimed a spot somewhere in the range and settled in for a long night of contemplation.
Brian took a spot where he could keep an eye on the front door. He had planned on setting up a rotation of people keeping watch, but he just didn’t feel like it now. Just going to have to stay up all night. Would have had to do things like this if I was going to be a Ranger. Guess this will be a real world application of that kind of training.