Naomi
Outside Pop-Hopper Ambush Point, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
“Begin!” Naomi spoke, trying to color her voice with urgency and authority. Willow exploded out of her hiding spot on the far side of Jonah, faster than Naomi could have possibly kept up with. So far, so good. Willow being faster and flashier was part of their strategy, after all. Once Willow was halfway to the jimgle-grimbs, Naomi broke cover and followed.
“Enemy focus status?” she sent to System through the party chat.
He only took a moment to reply, “Eight in the clearing facing you, three are turning to chase Willow. Only one of them still has a weapon.”
“Heard.” She saw the same thing System had reported, but she thought it was prudent to make sure. Not being faster than a train had its advantages. One of which was being able to actually gather information and plan accordingly. It took a handful of seconds before the first jimble-grimb realized there was another attacker coming at them. It screeched and the other three that were reeling from Willow’s assault at the edge of the forward group snapped their attention around toward her.
It appeared Naomi would get to see the difference in fighting the smarter ‘evolved’ variant of jimble-grimbs. The difference was clear when all five spread into a semi-circle instead of all rushing her at once. Skidding to a halt a handful of feet away, she sent to System, “Ready for buffs.”
She felt power rush through her body, her mind sharpening a bit and small red points showing up on each of her enemies. The brightest and most obvious were around the sides and tops of the creature’s heads. System had cast the one spell he had on her. He’d only been able to choose one spell at level one and had gone with a support spell after talking it through with her and Willow, given the rest of his capabilities. The spell was called Predator Vision, the description had said it would improve the target’s combat focus and provide ‘hints’ regarding enemy weak points.
Naomi lunged forward, stabbing out with the tip of her long stave. She and Willow had spent another session going through basics again, this time with Naomi actually focusing rather than agonizing about her state of mind. She noted the enemies on the far right and left were stepping forward, clearly intending to pincer her between them. The point of her stave slammed hard into the center creature, folding it over as it made contact with its bulbous belly, but she’d missed her red-painted target. She’d been going for a spot of red where body began transitioning into neck.
As soon as they noticed she was off-balance from the strike connecting, her left and right opponents leapt forward with their sharp claws extended. The last two had both retreated slightly and were spreading around. She thought they were trying to get behind her. Yanking her stave back, Naomi managed to get it up into what Willow had called ‘mid-guard’ and shoved forward hard just as the two hopping monsters arrived. She intercepted them, catching one in an armpit and the other in one of the weird joints between wrist and forearm, though they managed to each cut one of her arms in retaliation. She twisted the stave with both hands counter-clockwise as hard as she could. The jimble-grimb she’d caught in its front-arm armpit had just lifted its arm and waddled back. The other one, however, was caught off-guard and the stave pressed downward on its front-arm joint hard enough to cause a crack and screech.
She stepped backward and pulled the stave beside her on her left, then lunged forward toward the uninjured one. It leapt to its left, landing beside its companion with a broken arm. System’s voice came suddenly, “Jump back!”
Naomi didn’t hesitate, throwing herself backwards. She stumbled as she landed, her foot slipping on a patch of lose stones and sticks. She saw both of the jimble-grimbs who had tried to circle her land where she’d been moments before; six claw-tipped arms whipping down through empty air. She didn’t hesitate, stepping back into the fray. She spun the stave into an upper-guard and swung down as hard as she could. The blow landed beautifully, cracking the skull of one of the two would-be ambushers. The second one lunged toward Naomi and managed to take hold of the stave with all three of its hands. It screamed at her, “STUPID!”
Twisting her hands to roll the stave, just like Willow had shown them to break an opponent’s grip, she yanked it toward herself. The sudden friction and force caused the creature to release the shaft with a hiss of pain and look down at its hands, which felt like they were burning. The stave came around and ended its distracted consternation with a crack as it connected with its temple.
The little jerks didn’t give her any time to catch her breath. They both leapt at her. Performing the same block as before, it was only slightly less successful. She caught the one with a non-broken front arm in the weird joint this time and spun the stave in that direction, breaking it. The second one managed to dodge being caught entirely and wobbled toward her right, trying to slash at her with its non-maimed claw-tipped appendages. Fortunately, the creature was severely off-balance with the broken arm hanging uselessly in front of it. Naomi took advantage of the fact; stepping toward it at the end of spinning the stave down and bringing the now skyward facing length of wood down hard, cracking it hard on the head. Not enough to kill it. She noted as it fell but was still twitching.
“The other one’s coming!” System informed her frantically. “Heard.” Naomi replied gratefully, having been distracted for that moment. She stabbed out with the tip nearest the enemy. It fell backwards as it tried to change its forward hopping motion into a sideways dodge. Having only stabbed as a distraction, Naomi was able to reposition and stab down directly into the jimble-grimb’s wide left eye.
Disgusting. She noted as she pulled the shaft out of the dead creature’s skull while looking around to take stock of the situation. Only one enemy remained, the one she’d hit in the belly at the very start. To her surprise, it seemed that although she’d missed a ‘weak’ area, she had hit hard enough to cause some real damage. It was holding onto the spot with its left arm while staring at her. Naomi charged forward, sweeping her weapon around and cracking its skull when it was too slow to react. It had tried crouching for a leap, but was apparently in too much pain. The hesitation cost it its life.
“Three coming from in front, about to break the tree-line, another one coming from your left.” System told her, calmer in this warning than the last. Naomi began positioning herself so they’d all be approaching from her front rather than from blind-spots.
As the creatures rushed her, she saw Willow above the trees a bit in front and to her left. She noted, but ignored, the phenomenon. She was certain her friend had just figured out how to do something else ridiculous like how to fly or something. Of the two of them, Naomi was certainly the one in more trouble. She focused on the oncoming enemy, studied them. She saw rage and fear on the creature’s twisted faces. She didn’t want to feel fear, it wasn’t an emotion she ever enjoyed. Rage though… She’d read about it giving strength, bravery, thrill… She wanted that for this fight.
The emptiness within her surged from the center of her being, then up through her gut and into her throat. Feeling like she would vomit, Naomi’s mouth snapped open involuntarily and a tongue of pure darkness flashed out and wrapped around all of the jimble-grimbs. Their eyes went blank and they stopped in their tracks. In contrast, Naomi felt fury suddenly explode within her soul. She screamed and charged. The stick in her hand blurred as she swung without skill or intention, bludgeoning her enemy - crushing, breaking, destroying. This will teach you stupid little fuckers to scratch me! She continued striking, ignoring the nagging voice that kept trying to tell her to stop.
Suddenly, like a light flicked off, the anger was gone. Her stave, which had broken and was now closer to club-sized, landed one last time. She stared at the pile of bloody pulp in front of her, feeling baffled. Why… What?
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“PRISM- NAOMI! Are you there?!” System’s voice was panicked, worried.
“I’m here.”
A sigh of relief came over the chat, “Good. It’s time to fallback. There’s a hundred or so more coming. We can do another ambush later.”
“Understood. Falling back. Pheonix is falling back already?”
“Just told her, yes.”
Without another word, Naomi turned and ran toward their rendezvous point. She was almost surprised when none of the remaining jimble-grimbs followed her. At least she was until later, when Jonah explained that Willow had killed almost all of them before they had to fall back. She hadn’t done too badly herself, either, having singlehandedly killed nine of them. Almost single-handed. Jonah’s spell helped improve my reflexes and instinctive ability to go after weak points.
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Jonah
Observing Pop-Hopper Ambush, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
Jonah’s shoulders slumped in relief after getting through to Naomi. He rolled his eyes as he could almost hear Willow’s nagging, It’s Prism while we’re in an operation!
He carefully stood and began weaving through the forest. He maintained his RTS View, giving himself an easy way to navigate and avoid enemies. Not that there were really any left, other than the ones coming from the north. They were waddling slowly for some reason, although given his view didn’t let him look all that far away he was certain they could hear the battle. He regretted that he couldn’t ‘zoom’ down enough to actually see facial expressions. When he tried, the mental image distorted like the textures were too low resolution.
All things considered, the battle had gone spectacularly. He’d maintained his buff on Naomi, watched the battlefield for possible dangers, and generally tried to maintain awareness. Although he didn’t feel like he’d done much, he’d gotten a full 50xp from the fight. That was enough to push him to level two and get him halfway to level three! He was excited to see what he could choose when leveling.
Watching Willow fight from a top-down perspective had been amusing. The fights he’d seen her in before had been fast and almost entirely unintelligible to him, but in his RTS View everything seemed just a bit slower and simpler. It’d been like watching a hero take to battle against common mobs. As she passed, the enemies all seemed to be pushed back as if Willow was an oar and they were the water. Each time one got to close, the enemy counter at the top of his view dropped down by one. Then she’d jumped. He had no idea why she did that, but it was certainly impressive. It had caught the attention of all of the nearly pop-hoppers, as well as the scouts for the approaching hundred-strong force. Then she’d descended like a meteorite and when she landed it seemed some kind of effect was applied to the monsters as they started screaming, bodies apparently tearing themselves apart. He saw one of them mid-leap literally bisected as its torso continued up and on, while its legs simply froze mid-air. It was both gruesome and incredible.
Having arrived at the nearest rendezvous point, which also appeared to be the one Naomi and Willow were rushing to, Jonah stopped to wait for the rest of his team. He frowned as he thought through Naomi’s actions near the end of the fight. She’d been working through her enemies methodically, as she’d done the last time. In his opinion, she’d been doing extremely well. He’d only seen her hp drop by four points. Out of her pool of a hundred and twenty, that was nothing. Then she’d opened her mouth and a huge swath of absolute blackness reached out around the group approaching her and she’d gone ballistic. It’d been like watching a kid throw a temper tantrum.
Although she’d defeated all of her enemies much faster, she’d also entirely ignored him and her surroundings until she just as suddenly snapped out of it. They’d need to discuss that. The reason she was supposed to be the leader was her clear head. If she couldn’t maintain that, maybe they should reconsider. Although… Does it matter who the ‘official’ leader is? Willow will always be the one to decide what we do, it’s just how she is. I’ll definitely be the one coming up with specifics and communicating, and Naomi is our balancer. If nothing else, she keeps Willow and I on task. I guess she doesn’t have to be calm mid-battle to be our leader if that’s the point of the role.
Willow arrived first, which was no surprise considering she was just much faster. Naomi arrived right on her heels, though. Grinning, Willow pumped her fist, “Good job, System, Prism! That was awesome!”
She looked between them, her eyes landing on the scratches on Naomi’s arms but not commenting. She turned to Jonah, “Did you get xp like we hypothesized?”
He nodded, “Yep. Enough to get a level and a half.”
She begun rubbing her hands together just under her nose and murmured in a cartoonish voice, “Guud, guuud, it is all going to our plan. Soon we shall be more powerful than anyone could possibly imagine!”
Naomi smiled slightly and then asked, “Should we continue on to our camp? System, did any of them follow?”
“Nope, we’re in the clear.” Naomi nodded and started walking in the direction of their base.
After a moment’s hesitation, Jonah decided he should bring up what happened. Willow was on cloud nine and clearly hadn’t seen what happened, or didn’t care. She had that far off look that told him she was either looking at her UICI, or she was ‘in her dojo’. He would bet on the later, considering she had xp to allocate. He and Naomi would need to do the same soon, too. Though he wanted to experiment a bit to see if both of theirs also dissipated over time like Willow’s. She was on auto-pilot walking behind them.
He walked beside Naomi and cleared his throat, “Hey, Naomi… Er… Prism? Are we in an op right now?”
She considered then nodded, “Until we’re back at the camp and feel safe.”
“Okay, Prism, then. I noticed that something ah… Happened with those last four pop-hoppers you fought. Did you figure out how to use your mana? You mentioned before that you felt like your insight had settled into place, but you didn’t feel anything like the mana Willow described and don’t have an interface like mine to help.”
He waited for a bit, until he was starting to worry she wasn’t going to answer. Sometimes she just stayed silent if she didn’t want to talk about something. Usually when Willow brought something up, which was fine in those cases, because Willow always knew how to smooth over the awkwardness and avoid letting it linger. He had no idea how to do that, though. I should have just talked to Willow about it, then she could have talked to Naomi. But… Naomi’s my friend too, I should be able to talk to her directly.
Before he could continue down the path of should-haves and should-be-able-tos, Naomi answered, “I don’t know exactly… I wanted the anger I saw in the jimble-grimb’s eyes.” Her voice was soft, as if she was worried he’d hear her. Which was ridiculous considering she was talking to him. He just moved a little closer as they walked to avoid missing anything she said.
“I know it’s weird to want to feel anger. I remember how it could feel good to be angry though. Or at least satisfying when I did something about the anger I was feeling and… I was right. It felt so good.” Her voice was, for a moment, full of something. He couldn’t really identify what, excitement maybe?
She sighed, “Then it was gone.”
“The anger?”
“Yeah. I think I took it from the jimble-grimbs. They all stopped in their tracks and stared at me with entirely blank eyes. It was like they’d been wrung out entirely of all emotion. I only felt the anger though. Rage. Fury.” Again, her tone was more complicated than Jonah was able to parse through. It seemed like she had enjoyed the feelings though.
He wasn’t entirely sure one should enjoy feelings of anger, but it wasn’t really something he felt equipped to judge. Instead, he pushed forward to the actual issue. “Well, I’m glad you figured that out! It seems useful, and if you like it then… Good? Willow loves fighting and killing those monsters, so I can’t really say liking the feeling of anger you got during the battle is that different? But ah… You kind of lost it a bit.”
Naomi’s face twisted in a kind of wince and she nodded, “Yeah. I should have remained more in control. I’ve just never felt so much all at once. It was so raw and so strong. If that’s how those jimble-grimbs were feeling, I don’t know how they were managing to coordinate with each other at all.”
“Well…” Jonah thought it through for a moment before continuing, “You said you took the anger from all of them. That’s four evil little creature’s worth of anger. They’re also probably entirely used to feeling angry, but if you don’t really feel anger much then… Well it’d be overwhelming for anyone in that situation.”
He watched from the corner of his eye, carefully not looking over at Naomi in case she felt like he was being judgmental or something. He’d be accused of as much in the past when trying to help people work out emotions. To him, emotions were straight forward. Cause and effect. He knew what happened to cause his emotions, he knew what they drove him to do, and he knew what he actually did. He also knew others didn’t quite view them in the same way.
To his relief, Naomi just thought about it for a bit before nodding, “That makes sense. So I’m going to have to find a way to practice, then.”
Letting out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding, Jonah nodded, “Yeah. Maybe if we can figure out a way to ‘inject’ those emotions, Willow can teach you how she controls her own? You remember how she mentioned she used to struggle with anger herself.”
Naomi just nodded. Not seeing anything else he could, or should, say, Jonah let the silence stretch. For once, it felt comfortable. He felt he might have successfully had an important conversation about emotions for once.