It was oddly lonely without Rakshasa and his yelling.
After leaving the Rosso Woods, Rocky returned to Redvein. The walk back had been deathly quiet, and none of the gargoyle’s attempts at sparking a conversation had managed to light the fuse. Upon returning to the city, he’d had decided to wander around aimlessly yet again, in part because that’s what came naturally to him, but also because he was hoping it would annoy Rakshasa and get a mean nasty comment or two from him.
Nope.
That fact had taken a lot of the fun out of exploring Redvein and all of its eccentric little businesses; not even the arcade run by talking rabbits managed to excite Rocky for very long.
And so, as the sun began to set and the day eased into the night, Rocky trudged back to the hotel, not even realizing he was about to stay there two days in a row rather than try a new place like he’d previously mentioned.
After taking another shower, he dropped onto the bed, damaging it in the process even further than he had before. His eyes blankly stared up at the ceiling. He wasn’t even especially tired, and in fact would have loved to continue wandering around town for hours, but going to sleep would make tomorrow come sooner, and tomorrow held the potential for enough time to have passed for Rakshasa to return to normal.
But even with that hope driving him, he just couldn’t get his body to sleep. He sat up in the bed with a grumble, looking out the window. There were no thieves slithering through the alleys on this night, unfortunately.
His mind replayed the scene. Tailing the thieves….following them into the capitol building….stopping them from breaking into the-
Rocky’s head suddenly perked up. Oh, right! He hadn’t gotten to see those forcevein things, had he? They sounded so interesting, but Captain Carmine had told him they were off limits….
I should just go see them….No one will stop me….
For a brief instance, he thought Rakshasa had finally decided to speak up, until he realized those must have been his own internal thoughts. With how much the GODBREAKER’s voice dominated his mind, those words almost felt like a stranger’s to him.
But perhaps he was right….Rakshasa wasn’t objecting to the idea of sneaking into the capitol again to see the forceveins, and the thieves obviously wouldn’t be there, so a huge fight breaking out and alerting the guards wouldn’t happen again.
Yeah! Why the hell not? What was stopping him?
* * * *
ULTRA ROCK
* * * *
Carmine clambered off of Aren’s mountainous body, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she waddled over to the bathroom to clean up.
Their session had left scorch marks all over the bedroom, though that was not unique to them; the fire particles surging within the spirits of the Redvein populace were quite prone to adding literal sparks to each and every tryst that occurred within its walls — so much so that, in true Redvein entrepreneurial spirit, one couple had opened a business specializing in interior burn damage repairs. They were millionaires in months.
“I’ll schedule a repair for tomorrow,” Carmine said as she returned, assessing the damage. Aren might have been a harmless, gentle soul in day-to-day living, but he was a right flamethrower at night, and Carmine was no slouch herself.
“Oh when we’re both at work, you mean?” he asked, stretching his gigantic arms above his head and yawning. “That’ll be nice. Then we can both come home to it all fresh and fixed up.”
The big man glanced over at his partner, having noticed she hadn’t returned to his side in the bed. She was sitting on the edge, eyes locked on a particularly large scorch mark in the wall. He thought for a moment that she might have been angry at the severity of the damage and how expensive it might be to fix, but upon taking a closer look into her eyes, he instead noticed the determined fire she was known for.
There was no doubt in his mind that it had something to do with the kaiju attacks. Though Carmine certainly wasn’t the type of person to put their worries out there, Aren had a pretty good read on what bothered her. He knew how important the city was to her; how passionate she was about her job. Protecting the city was the most important thing in her life, and giant monsters randomly popping out of the ocean to attack was just about the biggest threat there could be to a city.
Though he himself was out of breath and ready to call it a night, he could see that she was still raring to go; like all the fatigue had just burned away. He chuckled, which did catch her attention, pulling her eyes away from the wall. “What’s so funny, babe?” she asked.
Aren grinned, letting out another yawn before speaking. “It’s okay; you can go back to work tonight.”
“H-huh? What do you-?”
He held up his hand. “Don’t worry about the ‘coming home at night’ rule for today. I know you’ve got important stuff to do at work, so go on ahead.”
He couldn’t help but break out into a huge grin at the look on her face. The shock was evident, sure, but even more prominently than that was the undeniable light of excitement in her eyes.
She leaned over and planted a rapid-fire combo of kisses all over his face before jumping to her feet and hurrying over to get back into her uniform, thanking him the entire time.
As he heard the door close and lock behind her, Aren’s eyelids slowly drooped close, a faint smile on his lips. He’d always admired that hard-working spirit she harbored; it was not unlike his mother, really.
His hand moved up to the side of his jaw, his fingers tracing along the thick scars permanently etched into the skin.
* * * *
ULTRA ROCK
* * * *
The capitol building seemed even less safeguarded than it had the previous day, though Rocky surmised that was likely because the thieves had already been apprehended, and thus there was less of a need for a tight security force. Of course, the other reason was that many of the militiamen were continuing their seaside fortifications and observations, and there were still teams working on Rakshasa’s body as well.
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Thus, Rocky found it fairly easy to sneak back into the building, with the only real struggle being his entry through the ventilation shaft. He’d been able to simply bust open a door the previous night, but this time, he wanted to try following the thieves’ lead and sneaking in through the vents. It was a tight squeeze made even worse with the absolute cacophony of echoes as his heavy stone limbs banged against every inch of metal the whole way through.
But whereas the exterior had been incredibly light on security and easy to break through, the interior became a different beast, at least when he began to approach the vault doors leading to the forceveins.
There were a solid five or so guards posted around the hall and the room, armed with a variety of weapons. All but one of them looked alert and ready to fight, with the odd man out being the one sitting at the security desk working on his screenplay.
He paused. Now the real test began. He’d need to apply what he observed from the thieves, and apply the directions Rakshasa had given him as he tailed them. The exterior had been a mere warm-up; the interior was the real challenge. A true infiltration mi-
“Oh, hey Mister Roran! What brings you here?”
Rocky spun around in a circle. One of the security guards had approached him with a wave and a polite smile.
Shit! He’d already been spotted!
The security guard stopped in front of the gargoyle. “Did you lose something when you were here the other night, maybe?”
“Uh….”
“Or did the captain send you here?”
Rocky’s head perked up. He’d been presented the perfect cover! Carmine had been quite friendly to him, appreciating the help he’d offered in protecting the city!
He nodded confidently. “Yup! That’s it! She said I could check out those forcevein thingies before I leave!”
The smile on the guard’s face slowly faded as his brow curved up. “She….did? But she’s always been pretty adamant about not letting anyone near the forceveins….”
Crap! He wasn’t buying it! Now what?!
“Uh….”
The guard glanced in the direction Rocky had come from. “Is she with you or did she give-?”
Rocky punched the guard and knocked him unconscious.
After dragging the security guard around the corner and sitting him down on a bench, Rocky returned to the main room, tucking himself up against the wall. Luckily, none of the other guards had been in range to hear, but he would still have to get through them all before he could access the vault door.
He was fairly confident he could take them all down if it came to blows, but word would certainly get to Carmine, and he’d be royally screwed when that happened. And since Rakshasa was still unresponsive, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pilot the mech to high-tail it out of the city if it came to that.
Ugh, screw it. All this thinking was hurting his stone brain.
Rocky spotted the closest guard and ran right for him, his heavy feet leaving thundering echoes along the ground with each step.
The guard had his back turned, and had barely begun to turn and look over his shoulder when the gargoyle slammed into him.
With a high-pitched shriek, the guard was sent flying across the room, slamming face-first into the wall.
The sound was loud enough to capture the other guards’ attention. Two of them hurried over to apprehend Rocky, reaching for their weapons, while the third remained in his chair; far too engrossed in the lewd scene he was writing to bother with the outside world until it was complete.
The first guard fired off some sort of electric bolt in Rocky’s direction, likely intending to paralyze him, but the gargoyle’s thick stone body proved itself immune to such weaponry.
The second guard instead chose to pull both of his tonfa out from his belt, twirling them around to get his arms warmed up before closing the final gap between him and the gargoyle.
“Whoa!” Rocky exclaimed as he held his forearm up to block the first tonfa strike. “What are those weapons?! Those are cool! Can I- OW!”
Though one might think the simplistic clubs were far too primitive and small to affect the strong form of a gargoyle, in this instance one would be proven hella wrong, as they say.
The guard’s tonfa assault was actually a thing of beauty, almost unbefitting of his lack of a name and physical description. It was a dance of brutality, weaving its way through Rocky’s (admittedly untrained) defensive maneuvers and striking with utmost precision. A rhythm of pain. A melody of violence. A ballad of asswhooping.
“Ow! Ow! Ack!” Rocky hissed as the tonfas clubbed him from all angles. The guard had been comboing him for almost a full straight minute, and never relented, moving forward even as Rocky was forced to back away.
Even the first guard had become mesmerized by his partner’s attack, standing in place and watching the action play out in awe. The third was still busy with his screenplay, oblivious not only to the fight playing out near him, but also the motion of a figure entering the capitol building on the surveillance camera monitors.
Rocky soon found himself backed up against the far wall, still unable to properly defend himself against this weirdly skilled guard’s tonfa combos. Regret began to bubble up inside him; this had been a pretty stupid idea, all things considered. Not only had he failed to infiltrate the capitol building, he’d certainly lose his good graces in Carmine’s eyes, and was now getting the snot beat out of him by this one single security guard.
He’d have to do it again….the attack he’d used to take down the thieves from the previous night. He hadn’t had a lot of time to recharge it, but it seemed to be his only option at this point.
And so, rather than continue to (sort of) protect himself, Rocky stood stone-still. His entire body locked up, frozen in place. The guard continued to wail on him for a few more strikes, although he quickly noticed that his opponent’s body was no longer reacting to the attacks; no more twitching in pain, no more being pushed up against the wall, nothing.
The guard paused, looking the gargoyle up and down. His partner joined him, tapping him on the shoulder. “What happened? You knock him out?”
“I’m not s-”
A powerful blast of water shot out from Rocky’s jaws, colliding into the two guards with incredible force. In half a second they had been thrust across the room, smashing into the opposite wall and collapsing in a pile, drenched from head to toe.
The geyser from Rocky’s mouth dissipated much sooner than it had before, and a few moments later, the gargoyle returned to motion, shaking his head. “Whew….Gonna need a drink after that….”
With the two (well, one, really) threatening guards defeated, Rocky began to make his way back to the vault door, though the typing of fingers on a keyboard soon caught his attention.
He stepped up to the security desk to take down the final security guard, but when the guard threw his hands up and whimpered out a, “Y-you can do whatever you want, I just wanna work on my screenplay, man! It’s almost ready to send to my agent!”, he held his fist steady.
Rocky motioned towards the vault door. “I wanna go see the forceveins.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever man, I gotta get this screenplay done!”
As the guard escorted Rocky over to the door, he said, “I’m writing a screenplay.”
“Yeah, I heard. That’s pretty cool, man. I’ve never written anything before.”
“It’s a really good one. In my opinion, anyway.”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh it’s a medieval grimdark litRPG isekai where a security guard’s stories start to come to life. It’s got it all man; heroism, sword fights, an in-depth magic system, a harem….I think it’s my magnum opus!”
The guard pressed his thumb into the fingerprint scanner, then positioned his eye over the retinal reader. Then, after inputting the passcode, he said, “Now I just gotta flip the switch and it should open up for you.”
“Thanks, man!” said Rocky. “Good luck with your screenplay.” Truthfully, Rocky hadn’t understood a single word the guard had used to describe his writing project, but he didn’t particularly care, either. He just wanted to go see these oh-so-important forceveins to make this entire night’s troubles worth it. Then he’d head back out and move onto the next new city.
But just as the vault doors began to open, a loud, explosive voice devoured the room.
FIRE!
A massive wall of blood-red flames shot up from the floor, creating an impenetrable wall between Rocky and the vault door.
“I am very, very disappointed in you, Mister Roran.”
Rocky spun around, and found himself face-to-face with Captain Carmine.
Before he could even try to stutter out some kind of explanation, the captain retrieved her forcepistol from her hip, aimed the barrel right at his forehead, and pulled the trigger.