Chapter 16: New Hope
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Taylor: Great job with that interview, Leo.
Phrasing was going to be important here. He had discussed it with Drew before starting this conversation and his often-surprisingly-aware friend had offered suggestions, but there was still so much potential for disaster.
Calliope gave him a puzzled look, but she responded in text.
Calliope: Thanks. Why is this over chat instea...oh, wait. You're about to lecture me, aren't you?
Taylor winced. This was not starting off well.
"Pass the bread?" he asked, speaking aloud so as to conceal the existence of the more important discussion from prying alien eyes.
Drew passed the basket of rolls. Taylor took one, smeared some butter on it, and used it to wipe up every trace of the drippings from his hot wings. The team had eaten at 10pm, immediately after waking up, gone on Omusa's tunnel show at around midnight, and it wasn't quite 1am yet. Still, everyone felt the need to 'chillax' (Calliope had cringed when Drew said that) for a bit before going back to grinding. Emotional whiplash and adrenaline drop were like that, and there was much to discuss after the interview.
As always, Bopca food was amazing. The buffalo hot wings were exactly the right level of spice ('pleasing burn' for Taylor, 'nuclear fireball of thermal destruction' for Drew) and the blue cheese dipping sauce was heavenly.
Taylor: Not lecture. You did good and I meant it. I'm just a little worried, that's all. You're taking a lot of chances lately, and it scares me. I know we need to be aggressive but it would absolutely gut me if you died.
"Try the ice cream," Calliope said, offering the literal bucket of dessert around. She sat surrounded by a rampart of food and was alternating between the various items as the winds of whimsy moved her. Drew waved her off, still working on the last of his hot wings, but Taylor gladly spooned out a bowl for himself.
Calliope: I'm fine, Unc. I'm getting the job done, that's all. Eat your ice cream and leave me alone.
Drew: You're doing great, Leo. We just want to be able to support you better, that's all.
"Damn this is good," Taylor said. The words were not simply cover; the ice cream truly was the richest, creamiest example of its kind he'd ever come across.
Calliope: You're both very sweet. Yes, I'll be careful. No, I don't want to die. There, is that good enough?
She gave him a Look over her ice cream and Taylor replied with a subtle nod of surrender.
Taylor: Drew, is there anything we can do to help you? Omusa was talking about how you need more of a hook...honestly, I think he's full of crap. You've got the blue hair, the bident that is also scissors, and the crowd seemed interested in the pot. Still, presumably he knows what he's talking about.
Drew: S'all good, dude. Sometimes you just gotta let things roll off, yeah?
"So, what's the plan for today?" Drew asked aloud.
"Finish up, take half an hour or so to digest and plan, then head back out," Taylor said.
"And fuck up some more mobs!" Calliope said, her attitude far too 'happy bouncy psycho killer' for Taylor's comfort.
"Damn straight," he said, playing to the cameras. "Gotta remind 'em about who the apex predators are around here."
"Heck yeah," Drew said. He paused. "Wait...that's us, right? We're the apex predators?"
Taylor rolled his eyes. "Yes, Drew. Humans are the apex predators."
"Cool, cool."
Calliope: For the record, I think that sproingy little tube rat is full of shit. Uncle Drew's got plenty of zoomy going for him.
Taylor: True. The blue hair makes you distinctive, easy to identify for aliens who have difficulty distinguishing human faces. The pot seemed like something the crowd approved of, and it's got to be unusual. Plus, you're damn good at social stuff. You should think about doing a podcast about the human condition, or how to interact with other people. Something like that 'How to Make Friends and Influence People' book.
Drew: Sounds like a shitton of work.
"Be right back," Calliope said, pushing her chair out so she could stand. "I need a refill." She took her empty pint glass over to the soda machine and dialed for a combination of Squirt, Doctor Pepper, Moxie, and ginger beer. Apparently the dungeon was insufficiently dystopian for her and she felt the need to do her part.
Calliope: I think you'd be great at it, Uncle Drew. You could do it in the safe rooms at night before we go to bed. You always stay up to smoke anyway, right?
Drew: Eh, I suppose. I'll think about it.
Calliope rejoined them and tore back into her plate of bacon-wrapped sliders and fried ice cream.
"Where do you put it all?" Taylor demanded, caught somewhere between admiring and appalled.
"Teenager," she reminded him, speaking around a mouthful of beef.
"Just wait until you turn thirty," Taylor grumbled. "Bam, metabolism stops and just looking at fried ice cream will make you blimp out. It will be hilarious."
"Eh, odds are I'm gonna die young and leave a pretty corpse, right?" She finished the slider and picked up the ice cream, eating it like an apple.
"No, Calliope," Taylor said, all trace of humor gone. "You are not going to die, and don't you even think that. We are going to make this dungeon our bitch and then we are going out into the universe and stopping Dungeon Crawler World from ever having another season. So put that 'dying' bullshit straight the fuck out of your head."
"Whoa, whoa," Calliope said, raising her hands in surrender. "Watch a cloud, Unc. It was a joke, yeah?"
"Not a funny one. Don't fucking go there. I want you focused on the fact that we are going to survive, got me?" He turned his glare on Drew. "You too."
"Woof," Moose said. He was sitting at the table beside them, having finished his own food and now studying the humans' in fascination while politely not sticking his head in. Given how much he had grown, his head was almost on a level with the humans' while everyone was seated. This gave Taylor a clear view of the bits of gravy smeared into his friend's muzzle.
"You too, boy," Taylor said, smiling and rubbing Moose's ears before pulling out a towel and wiping the dog's grinning face.
"Oops!" Calliope said, not at all casually dropping a bacon-wrapped slider on the floor. "I'm such a butterfingers. Moose, I guess the ancient compact of girl and dog says that you are now allowed to eat that."
Moose was halfway done eating the sandwich, so clearly he agreed.
"Don't give him bacon," Taylor said. "It makes him fart."
"But he likes it," Calliope said, eyes wide and imploring.
"And I would probably like heroin," Taylor said. "Doesn't mean it's good for me."
She sighed and 'accidentally' dropped a chunk of juice-drenched slider bun, but at least she flicked the bacon off of it first.
o-o-o-o
They spent half an hour letting the meal settle before going back out. While they waited, Drew smoked a blunt, Taylor read a dubiously-sourced prepper blog article about how to make improvised explosives, and Calliope tic-tacked around the room on her skateboard, much to the annoyance of the Bopca proprietor.
They weren't ten minutes out of the saferoom when they encountered the cocoon.
"Is it okay for me to say 'what the fuck?'" Calliope asked calmly, staring at the 7'-tall teardrop-shaped silk monstrosity. It was just barely translucent and they could see a vague blob inside it.
"Yup," Taylor said, also staring.
Brindle Grub Cocoon
Oh boy, oh boy. This is gonna be. So. Much. Funnn. (For me, anyway. You'll probably hate it for the 13.7 seconds before you die.)
There was a countdown timer running above the cocoon. It was at 27:34:16 when they walked up, and there was something hypnotic about watching it tick down moment by moment.
"Kill it?" Drew asked.
"With fucking fire," Taylor fervently agreed, pulling out a sack of napalm.
o-o-o-o
"I really wish we had more people in our contacts," Calliope complained. "We need to tell everyone to stop leaving their kills around for the brindle grubs to feed on!"
"We agreed to that the first time you said it," Taylor said. "And the second, and the third."
"And the fourth," Drew said, nodding sagely. He had a joint in one hand and was using his bident as a walking stick in the other.
Calliope glared at both of them, then hrmphed. Moose doggy-laughed at her.
"I wonder why this area is so empty," Taylor said, as they continued walking. "We haven't seen anything in twenty minutes."
Calliope whirled her board around to face him, excitement vibrating off of her. "Time for Siren Song?" she asked eagerly.
Taylor thought about that for a moment, then sighed and nodded. "I suppose."
"Hey," Calliope said with a grin, "you said it yourself: the monsters are in here with us, not the other way around."
Drew laughed. "Okay, terror child. You've convinced us. Ears on." He pulled a set of protective earmuffs from inventory and slipped them on. Taylor and Calliope did the same, then Taylor knelt down to cup his hands over Moose's ears.
"Three!" he shouted.
"Two!" Drew shouted.
"One!" Calliope said, immediately before she and Drew cut loose with their air horns. Moose threw back his head and howled, a long, primal cry that belonged in the throat of the woods-running wolf that was his ancestor.
They blared the horns over and over for two or three minutes, then put everything away and started moving again, with Calliope monster-walking her board alongside. Taylor stuck a hook and fishing line through one of the Tove Steaks and dragged it behind him to leave a scent trail. He put it away once Moose started whining and giving him puppy eyes, which were exceedingly amusing on a dog the size of a pony.
o-o-o-o
Siren Song was a bold plan, something that should have played well with the audience. Make a lot of noise, make yourself easy to track, draw in lots of mobs, kill them, occasionally drop a catchphrase, watch levels and social numbers soar.
Problem: No mobs were drawn in.
Half an hour later they discovered the reason: a room containing a huge pile of almost thirty dead toves with the names of a dozen different crawlers listed as having killed them. Clearly there was another party in this area, a stronger party, and they were busy hunting the place dry.
They also weren't cleaning up after themselves. The thirty dead toves were absolutely swarmed by hundreds of brindle grubs and there were nearly two dozen cocoons around the walls.
"Holy fuckballs," Calliope said. "This is absolutely the antiwhat."
"Yah," Taylor said. He took a breath and let it out slowly. "The cocoons are too spread out. They'll each need a bag of napalm to themselves and that would use up my entire supply. Then there wouldn't be enough for the bodies. Plus, those don't look good." He pointed.
Elder Brindle Grub — Level 4
There were dozens of the creatures working their way through a trio of Pot-Bellied Toves. They were two feet long and nine inches thick. Even from a distance, their carapaces looked much sturdier than the normal grubs and they had developed small clawed legs that allowed them to move faster than their younger siblings. Not fast—it would still have been easy to stay ahead of them at a modest walk—but fast enough. Also, they apparently now had teeth instead of raspy tongues, because they were chewing their way into the toves' bodies with disturbing ease.
"I got this," Drew said. He pulled tubs from his inventory and soon enough had a massive fogbank of smoke compacted into a ball. The stuff had been generated by burning weed on top of a pile of plastic trash bags soaked in napalm and it was nasty stuff; the grubs, Elder and otherwise, kicked off after a minute or so of soaking in it. Drew swept it slowly around the room, wiping out every grub. Partway through, Smoke Form leveled up to 8. Shortly thereafter, Torch leveled up to 5 and its duration and brightness doubled, meaning that it was suddenly feasible to turn the LED headlamps off and rely only on the spell.
Once the room was finally clear of grubs, the team focused on cutting the cocoons open. The first time, they were careful. They set up the barricades, tossed caltrops everywhere, spread a layer of napalm on the floor, and drenched the cocoon in more napalm. They gave the highly flammable gel a minute to soak in before going to work. They all stood back behind the barricades, Taylor and Calliope with shotguns cocked and aimed, while Drew extended his bident to its maximum length and sawed away at the cocoon's tough fibers.
When he finally got through, the cocoon split open like a balloon under pressure. Milky liquid gushed out, carrying the half-formed contents of the cocoon along.
The team stood for a minute, fully expecting the horror movie trope of 'haha, you thought I was dead but you were wrong!', but it didn't happen.
"Are those what I think they are?" Calliope asked, pointing.
Taylor groaned. "Yeah, I think so. Oh man, that is going to suck."
"Let's get the rest of them," Drew said. He had a joint tucked between his lips, but it was small and he seemed to be mostly smoking it for the flavor instead of holding the smoke.
The cocoons were tough enough that it took almost thirty minutes to destroy all of them. Unlike with the regular brindle grubs, the team got a bit of experience for each one. It wasn't worth it when compared to killing toves, but it did prevent the cocoons from hatching.
Once everything was destroyed they took all the bodies they could lift into their inventories and burned the rest. It was during this process that they discovered the Neighborhood Map waiting for them, hidden behind a scrum of bodies. Three of the bodies were Gas Toves. The fourth was not.
Lootable Corpse. Crawler Martin Wu. Level 8. Killed by Crawler Travis Fi.
"Goddamnit," Taylor said.
"Teetee," said Calliope, her eyes locked on the body of the young Asian man. He had been a teenager, only a few years older than Calliope. His body was badly chewed and had been burned before the team arrived. His inventory was empty.
"Maybe it was an accident?" Drew suggested. "Friendly fire."
"Hopefully," Taylor said. He thought about it for a moment, then bent to arrange Martin's corpse in a funeral pose: body aligned, arms folded on chest. The boy's death had happened recently enough that rigor mortis hadn't fully set in; his limbs could be moved, but his eyes refused to stay shut. Taylor laid a small handtowel over the boy's face to give him dignity.
"Martin, I'm sorry this happened to you," Taylor said. "I don't know your beliefs, but if you believed in a god then I hope they recognize your deeds and take you to their heart. If you didn't then...then we will remember you. If we come across this 'Travis Fi', we'll have a talk with him about what happened. If we don't like the answers..." He let the sentence trail off. He wasn't sure how it would have ended if he'd kept talking.
"We can't bury you here," Taylor said after a moment. "We aren't going to let the monsters have you. If you happen to be able to see what's happening, I hope you will recognize this as a gesture of respect." He pulled two bags of napalm from his inventory and poured them across the body. When the job was done he stood up and backed away to stand with his team.
The four of them stood for long seconds, heads bowed.
"Anyone got any other words?" Taylor asked quietly.
"Yeah," Calliope said. "Fuck everything about this place."
"Teetee," Drew said, the word heartfelt. "Light him."
Taylor gently tossed a torch onto Martin's chest. The napalm went up with a whoomp! that forced Team Trick Shot to back hurriedly away.
o-o-o-o
They wandered the halls for several more hours, using the Neighborhood map to seek out toves that were the right level for worthwhile murdering. The brindle grubs were everywhere, in enormous numbers. The team came on one hallway that was literally wall-to-wall with the things, carpeting the floor so thoroughly that it wasn't possible to pass without stepping on them. Granted, it was mostly the harmless basic brindle grubs who could be nudged aside without issue, but there were a few Elders mixed in. Taylor tucked a Distributor Cap into a bag of napalm and burned the entire hall to a crisp.
Eventually, they found a guild hall where Levi waited.
"I've been watching," the rabbit man said as the team came through the door. "I saw the bit with Martin. I'm sorry."
"Thanks," Taylor said.
"It sucks," Calliope added.
Levi nodded. "It does, yes. I'm afraid it's not going to be the last crawler corpse you'll see. It's only going to get worse from here."
"Way to be encouraging, dude," Drew said, tucking a joint in his mouth. He drew deep and held the smoke.
Levi shrugged all four shoulders. "It's hard, but I'm not here to be encouraging. I'm here to help you survive. I find that setting realistic expectations is the only way to do that."
"Sure," Taylor said. "Moving on. What's with the brindle grubs? Why are there so many? We got the Neighborhood map and there's entire sections of it that are red."
"Brindle grubs are the janitor mob for this floor," Levi explained. "They're not a mob intended for hunting, they're the system that the dungeon uses to clean up corpses and other junk that crawlers leave around. Regular mobs are all here when the floor opens, so once you kill them they're gone. Janitor mobs, every time you kill one a bunch more are generated. It varies, anywhere from five to fifteen."
Calliope's mouth dropped open. "Fifteen?! We killed a few hundred of them. Are you saying that there's now thousands of the bastards crawling around?"
Levi nodded. "Pretty much, yeah. There's a maximum—usually either five or ten thousand per Neighborhood—but once you hit that maximum it's essentially impossible to bring the numbers down. That's the entire point of the janitor system."
"When a grub cocoons itself, does it get replaced?" Taylor asked. "Do we get a new grub every time one of them starts to level up?"
"I think so, yeah. Can't say for sure since it's a judgement call on the part of the showrunners, but it's the way I'd bet."
Team Trick Shot groaned. Moose looked from human to human, puzzled. He was stretched out next to the fireplace, happily chewing on a rawhide bone that had been far too large when he was a normal sized dog and was far too small now.
"Okay," Taylor said after a moment. "Look, my feet are killing me and I feel like crap. There isn't a saferoom nearby—would it be okay if we all crashed in the corner for an hour before heading back out?"
Levi's smile was sad. "Sure," he said, the tone gentle. "Take all the time you need. I don't have any beds, but I can put out a bunch of extra blankets to make the floor a little softer, if you like?"
"Thanks, but we're good," Taylor said. "We brought air mattresses." Best of all, they were already inflated; every other aspect of the dungeon was an utter misery, but having an inventory was awesome.
o-o-o-o
True to Taylor's word, they lay down for an hour and each decompressed in their own way. Drew smoked, body loose and limp with his eyes looking into thoughts that floated a million miles away. Taylor threw an arm over his eyes, told his muscles to relax, and was utterly unsurprised when they told him to pound sand. Thoughts and worries tumbled through his mind, his brain delighting in throwing potential problems into the spotlight along with half-formed plans that fell out of view before he could grasp them.
Calliope was asleep in seconds, the emotional hammer of the last few hours overwhelming youthful stamina.
o-o-o-o
They had been out and grinding for two hours when they heard the voices. There had been frequent small groups of toves and the Elder brindle grubs were starting to come with high enough levels to be worth killing, especially since they traveled in groups of twenty or thirty. They still didn't move fast enough to chase a human down but Moose was quick to discover that their bite could now rip chunks from metal, much less human or canine flesh. He made the mistake of stepping slightly into the swarm to bite down on an Elder grub that presumably looked extra tasty. He lost a chunk of calf muscle for his trouble. A pair of Heal Critter scrolls removed the damage and after that Moose took the creatures seriously; he worked the edges of a swarm instead of wading in, and he simply stomped the bugs flat instead of trying to bite them. The grubs had no defense against several hundred pounds of dog dropping his front paws on them like twin hammers.
They were almost finished with their latest batch when a voice drifted down the hall.
"I got this one. Go look...the...might..."
The dungeon acoustics and the distance prevented Taylor from catching all the words, but the key point was simple: people.
Team Trick Shot exchanged looks that carried unanimous agreement. They finished off the last few grubs in their batch as quickly as they could, inventoried the corpses, and jogged off towards the voices.
"Hello!" Taylor called as they got close enough for the blue dots to appear on his map. He had his yo-yo on his left hand, throwing out a few Around the World spins as the team approached. His weapons were all in his inventory. The shotgun was fully loaded, buckshot under the hammer and slugs in the other two tubes. He left his other weapons in inventory along with the shotgun. Calliope had put her sword away and Drew was using his bident as a casual walking stick.
There was silence from up ahead, then a woman called back.
"Who's there?"
An odd question, since they were doubtless visible on the woman's minimap, but presumably it was more of a phatic than an actual request for information. "Team Trick Shot! I'm Taylor, I'm with Drew, Calliope, and Moose. We've got no skulls."
"...Come ahead."
Taylor took a deep breath, put on his best performer's smile and walked the last twenty feet, the others in wedge around him.
Aside from the saferooms, bathrooms, and training guilds, this floor had little in the way of proper rooms. Instead, it mostly had places like this, where several hallways came together to merge into a crossroads thirty or forty feet across. This one was nearly carpeted in dead toves; they were all of the basic type, a thing that Taylor could only tell because the AI helpfully put floating words over each corpse. He couldn't actually see the bodies as they were entirely covered in a seething mass of grubs. Cocoons were everywhere, a forest of silk boulders with timers ranging from 16 to 20 hours.
A group of six women waited in the middle of the room, weapons raised and ready. In the back, a dark-haired young woman carried a bow, arrow on the string but aimed at the ground and not drawn. Beside her an Asian woman held a slingshot with the band pulled halfway back. The four in the front carried a motley assortment of weapons that included a sword and shield combination, a glowing hammer with a head the size of a driveway mailbox, a pair of cross-hilted daggers, and a club with obsidian shark teeth embedded in it. They were not dressed for the dungeon and three of them were barefoot.
The woman in the front was short and squat, with night-black skin and short hair the left side of which had been burned away. Her left ear had been charred by whatever had taken her hair and her left cheek was covered in burn scars. She was hunched over, her Roman-style tower shield raised to cover most of her body, but it did not cover the fact that she was wearing a bright red cap-sleeve pencil dress that had been messily sliced up the side almost to her hip in aid of free movement. Her sword was something off a fantasy novel cover, one designed by a person who knew absolutely nothing about swords and thought they would be 'sooper kewl' if they had lots of spikes and a serrated section on one side of the blade.
Taylor stopped walking, bound the Skyhawk up, and twisted the string into a triangle before swaying the yo-yo back and forth through it.
"Hi," he said, smiling. "I'm Taylor."
The shieldwoman blinked. "What are you doing?" she asked, her posture relaxing very slightly due to sheer confusion.
"Rock the Baby," Taylor said, his voice serious.
Drew leaned on his bident, angling the head backwards, and smiled. Moose sneezed, then sat.
"...Why are you doing Rock the Baby?"
Taylor shrugged. "Why not?"
Several of the women laughed and the tension eased a bit more.
"In seriousness," Taylor said. "It's a fun way to say 'hey, look, my hands are busy and I'm not threatening you'. Plus, let's be honest—it's cool, right?"
The Asian woman with the slingshot smiled and eased the tension on the band. (She did not, however, let go of it.) "Not sure I'd go with 'cool', but it sure is a good icebreaker." Sh wore a short green-and-white wrap dress and over-the-knee wedge heeled boots. How she had been running and fighting for a week in that outfit boggled Taylor's imagination.
"I'm Taylor," he said again. "This is Calliope, Drew, and Moose. We cool?"
The shieldwoman glanced at her friends, then lowered her shield and let her sword hang at her side. "Yeah. I'm Tina. This is Lois, Marina, Min, Jada, and Alice."
"Pleasure," Taylor said, binding the yo-yo to his hand and shortening the string in order to pin it to the back of his fingers.
"Drew," Drew said, waving.
"Howdy," Calliope said, smiling and offering a nod. "I'm Calliope."
"Huff!" Moose said, then sneezed and panted happily.
The women were not made of stone; none of them were able to resist smiling at the dog's greeting.
"What brain?" Calliope asked, gesturing around at the room.
Tina, a woman in her late twenties, clearly was not fluent in Teen. She looked over her shoulder at Marina, the girl with the bow, who was almost certainly old enough to get married in Mississippi but probably not old enough to vote. Marina rolled her eyes.
"Farm," Min said, as though it were the most obvious thing ever.
"Oooh," Calliope said, nodding.
Taylor cleared his throat meaningfully.
"Whenever we kill something, we bring the corpse here," Tina explained. "We also bring grubs. We swing by periodically to drop off more corpses and to kill a bunch of the grubs and cocoons. The basic grubs aren't worth anything but they level up as they eat. Once they become Elders they're worth some XP. Not a lot, but it's easy to make hundreds of the things and it adds up. They cocoon after level five, and the cocoons are decently valuable for zero risk."
"Zero?" Jada asked archly. She was in her early twenties with chocolate brown skin and a full-on Afro. She carried a pair of clearly dungeon-provided daggers. She wore close-fitting dark-blue blue jeans, a men's white Oxford shirt, and a pair of ballet slippers that glimmered faintly with the sign of dungeon loot. As with everyone else in the dungeon, her clothes were dirty and beaten up.
Tina rolled her eyes. "Yes, fine, you can slip in the goop and get accidentally stabbed by the stinger on the embryo. It was an accident and I barely needed to use a Heal spell."
"I'm just sayin', it's not zero."
"I think you're attracting monsters," Taylor said. "We got the neighborhood map and I can see at least a dozen toves coming this way. Not fast, but they're coming. It's mostly the dangerous ones like the Gas and Franklin's types."
All six women thrust their weapon hands into the air, threw their heads back, and shouted "Valkyyyyrie! Ai-yai-yai-yai!"
What did you even say to that?
"Uh...right," Taylor said after a moment. "Timers on the cocoons are running down."
"Valkyrie!" Lois shouted. She was Caucasian, early twenties, and carried the warhammer that should have been physically impossible for a human to lift. She was also wearing a sky-blue halter dress that consisted of a front- and back panel laced together along the sides in a crisscross pattern, leaving a lot of skin showing.
Tina's eyes flickered as she sent a chat message. Lois looked grumpy for a moment.
"We'll deal with the incoming," Tina said. "Tasty little XP dumplings, yah?"
Now that things probably weren't about to go pear-shaped, Taylor took a moment to examine their properties.
Crawler #813,508 — "Tina Morton" — Level 9
Crawler #813,509 — "Jada" — Level 8
Crawler #813,515 — "Louisa Lem" — Level 7
Crawler #813,521 — "Min Li" — Level 8
Crawler #813,524 — "Alice Whi" — Level 8
Crawler #813,525 — "Marina" — Level 7
They each had a trio of bronze stars above their heads, indicating three Neighborhood bosses killed.
"You guys are strong," Drew said, his voice relaxed.
"Damn straight," Jada replied. "Farming's way more effective than wandering around looking for stuff."
"We've been doing pretty damn okay ourselves," Calliope said, her chin thrusting in challenge. "Says the person with the highest level of all the women in the room, and the only one who isn't dressed like a hooker."
Taylor put a restraining hand on her shoulder, but Jada had already taken offense.
"You got a mouth on you, short stack," she said. "You—"
"Jada," Tina said. Her tone shut the younger woman down.
Tina nodded generically towards Team Trick Shot. "We've had a few problems with other crawlers," she said. "Like, 'almost got skulls' trouble."
Taylor nodded. "I can understand that. Back on the first floor, we ran into a bunch of racist jackholes wearing Confederate flags. They already had skulls and I'm pretty sure they would have attacked us if we hadn't been strong enough to stand up to them." He grimaced. "Good fighters and we managed to team up with them and a bunch of other people in order to clear the Borough boss that was sitting on the stairwell. They played fair with us, but I'm still glad we haven't seen them again." He looked around the room, taking in the scene. "Gotta say, this is a slick move. A good chunk of our XP came from that Borough boss fight, so you might well be doing better than us if we didn't count that."
Jada seemed somewhat mollified by the admission.
Calliope: Jesus, Unc. Way to make us look like pussies. You gonna let her stank on us like that?
Taylor: Hush. We need friends, not more fights.
Tina's posture had grown slightly more wary at the flickering glow of Taylor and Calliope's eyes during their brief chat conversation. Taylor saw that and decided not to push their luck.
"Look," he said, "the recap's on in an hour. I don't know if you guys have the Neighborhood map, but it's back that way if you don't." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Nearest saferoom is about twenty minutes away so we were figuring on starting back now. You're welcome to join if you like?" Mentally, he was whispering please say no please say no please say no. He wasn't in the mood for more Calliope drama right now.
"I think we'll stay," Tina said. "Got a few more dumplings to gobble up. Catch you later, maybe."
"Cool," Taylor said, nodding in relief. "Mind getting in chat?" He held out one hand in a loose fist.
Tina hesitated for only a moment before nodding and moving forward to bump fists with each member of Team Trick Shot. Her team followed, although only one of them actually bumped fists at a time while the rest kept their weapons subtly ready.
"Hey, uh," Drew said as the exchange was completed. He rubbed his neck in embarrassment. "Uh...your clothes. They're, uh...and your shoes...I mean..."
Min laughed.
"I'm the Resident Advisor for the Zeta Beta Psi sorority," Tina said. "The others are sorority sisters—"
"Except Little Nip here," Alice added helpfully, nodding towards Marina.
"Right," Tina said. "Alice's younger sister. Anyway, we were coming back from a club when everything happened. We weren't going to make it on the surface so we decided to try our luck in the dungeon. Now we're Team Valkyrie."
"Didn't that Hekla woman on the recap already nail that role?" Taylor asked.
"We picked it first," Jada said. "How were we supposed to know she'd steal our schtick?"
"Anyway," Tina said. "It's something of a mixed blessing. There's a lot of horny alien boys out there who like the 'club girl in ripped clothes' look, so we've got great numbers. On the other hand, turns out that stilettoes make your ass look amazing but they're terrible for running and fighting." She smiled and gestured at her own feet. "Wedges aren't great either, but at least they aren't completely impossible."
"I had the nicest pair of spike heels," Lois said regretfully. "Broke on the second day, which sucks because I saved up for three months to buy those things. Haven't managed to find any shoes since then." She grimaced. "The AI has been a little disturbing about it, honestly. I keep getting achievements related to my feet."
"Same," Min said. "I once went on a date with a guy who had a foot fetish. He was more discreet about it."
"Broke my heel when I used it to hammer on some stupid rat up on the first floor," Jada said. "The loot box for the rat had these in it." She pointed at her pink ballet slippers. "Given how coo-coo for cocoa puffs the AI is about Min and Lois's tooties, not sure how I feel about getting these things. Feels a little insulting, you know?"
"Oh," Taylor said. The AI's sexual preferences and potential degree of racism felt like a very bad topic to pursue. "Uh, well, if we find any footwear, we'll let you know. You've all got us on chat if we can help with anything. Is it cool if we reach out to you if we need some extra firepower for a boss raid or something?"
"Sure," Tina said. "Good luck."
"Thanks." He paused, debating, then decided to go for it. "Seems like you're doing great on your own, but seriously: call if we can help. We've worked with some other groups before and we're finding that teamwork is the best way to remind the mobs that they're stuck in here with us, not the other way around."
Tina smiled and gave him a little nod. "Will do. Safe travels."
Taylor stepped back, nodded in turn, and turned away. The skin on the back of his neck crawled a little when he did; the women had no skulls and had given him no reason to think that they wanted any, but there had been a slight air of wary tension hanging over the entire conversation. It made him uncomfortable with giving them his back, but he did it anyway. Did it, and prayed that Calliope would not fire off any parting shots. In fact...
Taylor: Leo, don't say anything. Smile, nod, and walk away.
Calliope: Jesus, Unc. Have a little faith, yeah? I'm not a complete idiot.
Taylor: Okay, sorry.
o-o-o-o
Walking away from the meeting with Team Valkyrie, Taylor had been stressing about his social numbers. He'd been at 616,681,294 views; was that a lot? It didn't feel like a lot, and given the importance that Levi had placed on social numbers, Taylor was wondering if the cramp in his stomach might be an ulcer.
Those worries vanished when he woke up in the morning and habitually checked his numbers, whereupon he sat bolt upright on the saferoom's rented cot.
Views: 32 Billion
Followers: 427 Million
Favorites: 129 Million
"What the..."
He ran out of words and simply stared. After a bit he shook it off, took a quick shower, and went out to the main room to wait for the others. They weren't up yet but the Bopca, as usual, was awake and on duty. Taylor ordered a double espresso and a lemonade because he needed the caffeine and something to get rid of the taste afterwards, then realized that the Bopca could provide anything so he changed the order to four caffeine tablets, a mocha, and a mushroom and cheese omelette.
He took the food and sat down, not waiting for the others to show up before eating.
It took about thirty minutes for Drew to appear, and ten more before Moose escorted the yawning and bleary-eyed Calliope into the room.
"Have you seen these numbers?" she asked. "They're bonkers. I guess Omusa's show paid out."
"Guess so," Taylor said. "Thirty-two billion here, and 427 million favorites. You guys?"
"Twenty-nine," Drew said. "And 390 million followers."
Calliope snorted. "Rookie numbers, Unc. Thirty-eight billion views, 502 million faves." She looked up at the ceiling and waved. "Hi, folks! Ready to party with Team Trick Shot?"
Taylor smiled fondly. No matter what happened, nothing kept Calliope down for long.
His eyes wandered around the table to Moose and Drew. The dog had his face buried in a bowl full of hamburger crumble mixed with gravy and would undoubtedly need to be cleaned up before they could go back out. Drew's eyes were still a bit bloodshot from heavy smoking the night before, but he was full of gusto as he worked his way through a cream cheese and banana omelette. His bident leaned on the wall next to him, within easy reach. It was the instinctive habit of a man who had survived in a combat zone for over a week now, in a place that had claimed three million lives in the first hour and another hitler of lives in the days since.
Against all odds, his friends were alive. Taylor was alive. Their gear and abilities were growing steadily better, their reflexes sharper, and now their social numbers were headed straight up at escape velocity.
Maybe this could be done after all.
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