Rico had never realized it before, but with like half their number out on deployment, the hotel felt so much more empty. Every single member of the hotel added something to the atmosphere. Like a hotpot, or a bowl of ice cream with too many toppings, you just couldn’t go back. He stared fruitlessly at the machine in front of him, humming with power as it performed continuous diagnostic checks on Den.
And it was a sight to behold. Glowing wires ran to and fro, a chaotic spiderweb of energy and information snaking from corner to corner. Gleaming metallic plates encapsulated chips and processors, fans and tanks, all working in seamless conjunction, despite their disorganized layout. Strangely, the quiet white noise and interesting choice of decor proved to be ironically comforting. Which was why Snake found Rico sitting alone amongst the cables and outdated analog screens.
“Hey, just coming in to check up on Dave’s project. Are you here for…?”
She gestured towards the blinking lights surrounding the inactive robot dog, their eerie glow splashing across the shadowed room.
“Yeah. Is Den doing okay?”
“I don’t know much about tech like Dave does, since my power leans more towards the whole chemistry side of science, but no one else is better, so he just asked me to check in on him from time to time. I don’t see any alarms or flashing warning signs or anything so I assume he’s doing well enough.”
On cue, a previously black loading screen was replaced with a wireframe model of Den, continuously refined towards unreachable perfection. Streams of data, solidified and thrumming with some unknown energy rushed through transparent pipes, scanned and transformed at various gates to fit the current need, all leading to a giant metal egg pod thing abandoned in the back of the room.
CURRENT PROGRESS: 78%...
OPTIMIZING PROCESSES. BOOTING TERMINAL. WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO?
Rico gave the screen a listless look and said “Where can I go?”
FILE LOCATIONS: THE DUST/SEARCH_HISTORY/DIAGNOSTICS/PERSONAL_PROFILES
Snake stared at where Rico was looking, shocked at this most incredible turn of events.
“By personal profiles, does it mean…”
LOADING…
PLEASE SELECT PERSONAL PROFILE.
[RICO] [SNAKE] [VOLA] [DIME] [CHASMA] [ACID] [MEI] [UNZE] [KYKI] [WISP]
“Why does he keep personal profiles on all of us?”
“How am I supposed to know, Snake? Ask Dave, he made all of this.”
LOADING SNAKE’S PROFILE…
HEALTH: ACCEPTABLE
PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION: STABLE.
CALCULATED CHANCES OF SURVIVAL: HIGH
NOTES: HER RELATIVE INTELLIGENCE AND EMPHASIS ON STRATEGY AND OTHERWISE OUT OF THE BOX SOLUTIONS INDICATE A GREATER CAPACITY FOR IMPROVISATION THAN OTHERS.
“Oh. Well. I wouldn’t say I’m stable, necessarily…”
“We probably shouldn’t be trawling through Dave’s personal files like this.”
“Why not? I’d like to see what he thinks about everyone’s chances of survival. I’d think they would be all high or guaranteed.”
“That’s what I don’t want to look at the most.”
Snake swerved on her heel and swiftly stepped over wire and cable to stand in front of Rico, a little worry in her eyes.
“You’re not totally okay, are you?”
“I don’t know. I just feel a kind of worry for them.”
“Dave, Vola, and Mei?”
“I don’t know if they’re ready to get hurt. Like, really hurt.”
“Those three are resilient. Dave’s a capable guy, and I know Vola enough to know she’s always ready to take on the world if he has to. And Mei’s already quite proficient with her spirit.”
“I know that, but I can’t help but think about what we’re all facing. I never had to fight against The Dust when I was a kid, and I don’t think any of us have either. And now a megacorporation wants to catch us too.”
Rico pulled his knees up to his chin, staring wistfully at an old lightbulb not replaced, occasionally flickering in its advanced age. Snake wiped her glasses on her shirt and then bent down in a squat, neatly folding the lab coat under herself so it would not drag on the dusty floor, a hand on Rico’s shoulder. She even gave him her best impression of a reassuring smile.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“We’re all Empowered. What’s a couple monsters or robots to our strengths?”
“But it might not be enough. I feel like if we’re not careful… one of us will end up put down. For good.”
He couldn’t see Snake’s eyes anymore, her spectacles enveloped in a reflective sheen from the overhead light. He could feel her draw back at the suggestion, the idea that one of them wouldn’t make it out in one piece: or at all. Though he could not see what she felt, he could kind of guess it was somewhere along the lines of silent turbulence, of mind and spirit.
“It won’t come to that. I know you have your worries, but I swear to you, until all of this is over: I won’t let the people who matter die. Just trust me on this one thing.”
And it DID work; Rico did feel more reassured by her confidence, however false and shaky it might be. It was not as if they had to wait long to find out.
BREACH IN RECEPTION LOUNGE. DISPATCHING PROTOTYPE UNITS.
ALL REPORT TO RECEPTION LOUNGE. HOSTILES INCOMING.
For the two, that’s all the kick they needed to get on their feet. Exiting the storage room converted tech repository, they were nearly swept off their feet by a sudden explosion, flinging metal shrapnel in all directions. Bits of razor edge steel embedded themselves in the beige walls, the carpeted floor, and Rico’s rock solid stone skin, hardened against this onslaught.
“Lay down your lives and pass peacefully. There is no point in resisting.”
Through the glass front it was obvious that Acid was holding off enemies outside. Swathes of bugs, formed of the dark stormy dust that swept through the city, all crawling over each other in an attempt to raze the skin off this foolish woman’s bones. With a burst of gas from her gauntlets, she leapt clear out of the way of their advance. A heavy spray of poisonous clouds skyward meant dangerously acidic rainfall, peppering the little bugs as they strained to reach her.
Glass shards littered the ground again. Ignoring the smashed glass doors, a thin figure of pure void stood in the lobby, eying Unze hiding behind the front desk.
Unze used [Mind Meld]!
“Your pathetic games do nothing. My mind is far beyond your control.”
Then Unze demonstrated his incredible throwing prowess by chucking Dime clear across the room. In an instant, a veritable torrent of wealth sprouted forth from his fingertips, covering the thin, impossibly tall dark man. They all felt it, then, in their bones; a visceral fear tingled in their minds as they beheld the unrecognizable silhouette, marked only by two intense eyes that drilled into the soul.
Plated in coinage, the ground cracked beneath his feet as the gravity on his body doubled, tripled, quadrupled in moments. Yet in a flash his body turned to dust, and reformed with a hand around Dime’s neck in a cruelly clawed embrace.
“Better. But not enough.”
Before his grip could get any tighter, a Potion of Instability split against his head in a powerful display of chemical composition, the thunderous force of the blast enveloping his head; it did nothing. He was not even scratched. The figure turned its head just to stare at Snake with his two glaring eyes.
“Is that it?”
Rico is afflicted by [Strength]!
His question was immediately answered with a punch to the face, forcing him to drop the little Volan and shield himself as blows rained down upon his body. Even with a sudden advantage, Rico found himself slowly being pushed onto the backfoot by this strange opponent.
“The hell??? Even a Potion of Strength isn’t enough for this guy?”
The response was a second Potion of Speed breaking upon his back. Only then could he hold out against this mysterious enemy in a fistfight. And even then Rico’s stoneskin sucker punches barely made a dent in the man of Dust, who gave him no quarter and let loose a never ending barrage of claw strikes that would’ve cleaved clean through anyone else in the Hotel. Barely able to evade most of them, Rico took the smart route and drop kicked the Voidman, causing him to slide backwards a few meters.
“Your strength does bloom, though you are still such a delicate, little flower.”
The backhanded compliment caught Rico off guard: for the better of two seconds.
“Every rose has its thorns.”
Scarcely did the sentence leave his mouth before the Voidman flashed forwards and struck Rico with such force that his subsequent impact into the wall blew through layers of plaster, only coming to rest after going through five separate panels.
“And yet… you are still plucked.”
It was then that he heard it; the sound of space warping in a non-euclidean manner. He never even saw Dime, leaping from the shadows behind him until it was already too late.
Dime uses—
“[Saving Money] 5!”
Slapping the giant coin onto his skull, he felt gravity suddenly increase by 150%, slowing him down significantly. But not slow enough.
Voidman executes [Puncture Vitals]!
He thought it was a miss, or a simple overreach at first. That sharp clawed hand flashed through his body, and Dime kept on spitting out coins onto the slender man of Dime until the Voidman finally turned to fog and zipped backwards to escape being buried alive by not-quite-legal-tender. Dime stepped towards him, raising his arms to maybe goad or taunt this cruel criminal.
His legs gave out under him. Did his arms always feel so heavy? He couldn’t help but sit down for a moment, the overwhelming taste of iron in his mouth. He felt kind of nauseous now, and when he coughed, blood stained the tiles he sat upon. He tried to will a coin into his palm, only for it to quickly fizzle out. Shapes moved in his vision, and the purest of black took up most of it.
So blurry. He heard a few things: screaming, the sound of metal warping, and colorful splashes of neon, so small from his view. No, wait, his field of view was just shrinking, everything slipping away as quiet serenity embraced him. He laid down as bright pastels flashed past his head and a white blob grew to consume his whole view. Here was the calm he had sought his whole life, away from all the people that wanted to keep him and make him produce produce produce the rest of his days.
“Quick! Get him the potions, he’s almost gone!”
“I’m trying, I just have only one of these on hand. They’re too expensive for me to mass produce!”
“THEN USE IT, DUMBASS!”
“I AM TRYING TO GO AS FAST AS I CAN!”
What an annoying buzzing in his ears.
“Hang on, I’ll use all the other potions I have, maybe they’ll help stabilize him.”
Truly, an escape from stimulation was impossible.
“Talk to me! Talk to me you dumb fuck, shit, shit, shit, I’m dumping it all, there’s no way I fuck up a promise this early—”
He begrudgingly gave in.
“Wwwha? Huh? What are you saying? I thought you didn’t swear.”
Snake sat there on her knees, flustered and wiping the sweat from her brow.
“Yeah, well, I just, you know, I do sometimes okay? What’s with the questions???”
He couldn’t reply, for a horrifying pain suddenly wracked his body, and the mere act of breathing felt like hell.
“Oh. Yeah. Please don’t exert yourself. I have a promise to keep.”
Dime felt at his chest and there was hastily grown scar tissue there, rough yet so fragile it felt as if a single punch would be enough to do him in. More bolts of neon flew over his head, yellow and teal.
“[Magic Missile]! [Thundercrack]!”
The Voidman scuttled backwards, hissing as spells parted his body so easily that if he could not reconstitute he was in real danger of becoming dust, permanently. In a last ditch effort he attempted to leap into the vents…
“NOOO! I CAN’T FAIL! NOT AFTER ALL THIS WAY!”
…And was grabbed by the ankle and chucked out the front door by Rico. It was so unexpected that the man of Dust had no chance of preemptively turning to fog to avoid the blow. Skull, meet pavement!
Dime turned his head, and there stood a man of metal, six feet tall with animal ears. That threw him for a loop.
“Um? Who are you?”
The metal man smiled sheepishly. Impressive for someone so imposing.
“Ah, yeah. I was a Husky, but you can call me Den.”
Dust just stared at him. The brain fog hadn’t let up yet. Rico stared at the splattered remains of the dude's brain on the concrete.
“He dead? For real?”
Acid stood outside, watching the last of the little Voidbugs scuttle away without a master controlling them.
“He better be.”
Dime’s honest reaction to this information was to pass out. Honestly? I can’t blame him.