- Location
- Earth
There's the Mass Effect one Pencils down Death rays up which is basically the reapers invade World of Darkness Earth.
I Hate This Game (Gamer OC-SI/Old World of Darkness)
- Thread starter Xolsis
- Start date
- Crossover Mature
- Location
- Australia
I'm kinda hoping someone writes a short sidestory showing Vaan finding his cool sewer-friend/teacher is gone and then eventually finding the site of her final battle against Cúchulainn, because while her impact could have serious changes on that setting, I seriously doubt we're gonna be shown any of that in the main story lol.
- Location
- New Zealand
Something rather interesting there.
She gained Cucu as a summon, and he's.... nasty.
Like, literal minor demigod nasty.
Hardly Zodiark or Ultima.
But the kinds of magic he can bring to a fight, yikes.
She gained Cucu as a summon, and he's.... nasty.
Like, literal minor demigod nasty.
Hardly Zodiark or Ultima.
But the kinds of magic he can bring to a fight, yikes.
On her first life, what year was she born in? The way she speaks, you won't think that she's 68 years old. Also, she knows anime enough to recognize the trope.
- Pronouns
- Male
Yeah, most Final Fantasy summons are basically WMD's. FF16 really showcases this with how the various Dominants use their Eikons in battle, or even how the party members used their Eidolons back in 13.
And Cuchulainn is a particularly nasty bioweapon.
She was born in 1997. So she would have died in 2065. Which is part of why her head lingo is the way it is. We don't really know how many of the current 20ish year old people would speak and think when they reach that age, because it hasn't happened yet. And I have met plenty of old people, that speak both English and Spanish that speak a lot 'younger' than one would think if that makes any sense.
The ripples of change would be limited to Vaan's own life, but he would probably still go and try to rob the royal treasury, wisdom wasn't exactly that Mia could teach thanks to the language barrier. And before Vaan get's involved with Balthier and Ash, he has no connection or affect to the main story, because most of that dealt with geopolitics, intrigue, and military operations that Vaan would have no idea were going on.
He and Panelo definitely are the 'odd ones out' during most of the main story, as they don't really have any connection to Vayne, Larsa, Ashe, until they get dragged into that whole clusterfuck.
Sorry that I have been silent this past week, work has been an endurance run and my life got a bit more complicated. I'll strive to get the next chapter done by the end of the week, but no promises.
So I've gotta say that I've been loving this fic and can't wait for more. One thing I've been curious about is your plans for the ansatsuken. Obviously it's for punching, kicking and throwing hadokens but more specifically I'm curious about your plans for the Satsui no Hado, aka "the surge of murderous intent", also known as what made Akuma himself and potentially an Oni. Are you going to become possessed by it and become Evil Mia for an arc or are you going to embrace Mu No Ken/ the power of nothingness and over come it. I'd love to see something like that.
Also, I'm curious how you'd deal with a non asshole vampire. I know Miami is Sabbat territory, but as you point out in your info post, those newly embraced don't really get a choice do they? I imagine there are quite a few young kindred in Miami waiting for just a chance to get outta dodge and this vampire supremacist cult they've been forced into.
Also, I'm curious how you'd deal with a non asshole vampire. I know Miami is Sabbat territory, but as you point out in your info post, those newly embraced don't really get a choice do they? I imagine there are quite a few young kindred in Miami waiting for just a chance to get outta dodge and this vampire supremacist cult they've been forced into.
- Location
- Russia
Thanks for this story, I like it.
Few thoughts:
1. 250K gold should let her buy many useful things from the shop.
2. She could also try learning skills from regular books.
3. Tactics should be very useful for her operations.
3.1. might be available via regular books with option to train using strategy games (from chess, go to starcraft, even poker) and historic records about various battles.
4. With access to Ki and Mana, it might be possible to learn Kanka (from Negima)
5. RWBY' Aura and JJBA' Hamon should be useful in enhancing allies.
Few thoughts:
1. 250K gold should let her buy many useful things from the shop.
2. She could also try learning skills from regular books.
3. Tactics should be very useful for her operations.
3.1. might be available via regular books with option to train using strategy games (from chess, go to starcraft, even poker) and historic records about various battles.
4. With access to Ki and Mana, it might be possible to learn Kanka (from Negima)
5. RWBY' Aura and JJBA' Hamon should be useful in enhancing allies.
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Into the Bag
- Pronouns
- Male
Spending an entire day as a potato back home wasn't so bad. Sure, there was stuff to do, but I just needed time to rest and sleep, something that Isabelle understood and gave me.
She didn't get any XP or GP from my time in the Waterways, so there was one theory that I had out the window, but it wasn't truly that big of a deal.
We could work on grinding her up later on when we actually went on the offensive.
The Sabbat were still gathering themselves, probably mostly higher ranking Kindred meeting right now, preparing for the storm they had no idea was brewing.
Now that I was thinking about it though, if they went to ground, finding them wasn't going to be an issue. At least, not if I played my cards right.
Detect Undead was a simple spell, and I needed to experiment with it first, but first I was going to need to catch a Vampire intact.
Which meant that I needed to store them somewhere.
Ergo, I needed to meet with Bertha, and I had to kick myself because I forgot to get her phone number.
At least because of Isabelle, money for that wasn't that big of an issue.
I would have a smartphone right now if the Technocracy wasn't insistent on keeping their precious timeline. What did it matter when the world was putrid and rotting from the inside anyways?
Meaning our meeting had to be face to face, and she had me waiting parked behind her bar at noon like I was some sort of dealer.
I mean… I used to be in my teens, but that's neither here nor there.
"What?" Bertha asked through gritted teeth, head shifting back and forth in the alley, eyes searching for anyone that might be nearby.
"I'm planning on doing some… work tonight. Do you have someplace that we can… store away a prisoner for a few nights?" I asked.
Instead of answering me, she sent me a withering look. "Maybe. I have some property just outside of the city. Why?"
"Because we need answers, and I think that it would be best to learn this way."
"What brought this on? Just a few days ago you were erring caution instead of action."
"Let's just say that I picked up a few new tricks." I said as I let a small crackle of electricity buzz through my fingers, causing her hair to stand on end just a bit.
"By any chance, is this going to be a solo thing for you, or can we actually go and learn a thing or two." Bertha didn't quite growl it out, ok no, yeah that was totally a growl.
I could just tell her no… but it might be best to see what she and George could do out in the field. "Fine. Got anywhere that we can meet up later today?" I asked, knowing that if we wanted to get this done as quietly as possible, then we were going to have to do it as close to sundown as possible.
"Yeah, just meet me back at the auto shop after 8PM." Bertha said without a second thought, turning back into her bar without another word.
Well, I like that she's at least to the point. Less bullshit and subterfuge that way.
Waiting, while definitely not one of my skills, is still something that old age taught me to at least deal with while waiting a few streets away from the autoshop. Well, having the system and reading through all the goodies that we would need definitely helped, with Isabelle keeping watch through the front while I hid in the back of the car.
Most of my purchases to finally get Runesmithing underway was going to have to wait until I actually got my own place, or maybe that Bertha or George could help with. Apparently the large lady had some cash to her name, because having that many places that she could crash at didn't come from nowhere.
I at least had spells out the ass, enough that I was basically a mini nuke that probably turn an entire block into an elemental storm big enough that I'd catch the attention of every mage and demon in the city.
Which is why anything more dangerous than a simple Fireball was staying locked up like that Antediluvian underneath New York.
Please, ancient evil vampire, please stay asleep until I can find a way to get you well down before you turn the city that never sleeps into another Bangladesh.
"What is next on the list on your new shopping list?" Isabelle asked offhandedly while staring out the window as cars slowly drove out of the autoshop driveway.
"Trying to see if we can get our hands on some wards and anti scrying methods. Along with some… insurance against anything that might try to slip through the Umbra."
"And that is?" She asked, not even surprised that I was dropping another word she'd never heard of before.
"Ah, right, vampires don't really know that much about the Umbra compared to most of the other night folk." I said offhandedly as I added another quest to the list of stuff that I needed to get done. There were a bunch of the more useful skills locked away behind some quests. "The Umbra is… weird thing to explain. They're basically other planes that exist… underneath this one? I think? Never could wrap my brain around how all of them worked with each other. Its where spirits reside, along with a bunch of other crap that makes its way onto this side, like the Dreaming, ghosts and a bunch of other crap that is harder to explain than it really should be."
And trying to get into that place with an Avatar was a good way to get your soul rent into pieces. I didn't know if me not having one of those made me exempt from that fate worse than death, but I wasn't in any hurry to find out one way or the other.
"As for what I'm buying right now, just some stuff that I'll be able to use later for some future projects." Quicksilver, the specific kind that a lot of Runemasters needed, was worth a pretty penny, but crucial for a lot of runes. Just getting the materials to make an anvil, because the Anvil was the most important tool for constructing runes, took out a third of my GP.
"Any chance that there are any goodies in there that I could use?" She asked, a playful smile on her face as she glanced at her own inventory screen with a glance.
I snort. "Please, I think it would be easier to find something that would be useful for you rather than me." Oh Disgaea, my little number hell, you were always full of options weren't you? I pass her an Assist and Hawk Eye scroll, two passive abilities that might, or might not level up with further uses. "These two should help against some tougher opponents we might find out there. Especially if it's us ganging up against someone else."
Her eyes went a bit glassy as she accepted the two little tomes, and I blinked in surprise as they just disappeared in a cloud of dust. Well… huh. Guess I was going to have to be careful about some of those. Maybe we could print out some copies and see if they were still usable.
Eventually we strode in where there weren't any cameras nearby, getting in through the back where Bertha had told us and made our way down into the basement.
Bertha was there, changed out into a long sleeved shirt that would have been bad in the summer, and cargo pants that had a few bulges that were most likely guns and knives.
George was in the corner of the room, facing the stairs, eyes locked on the both of us while one of his hands twitched occasionally towards the bag sitting next to him.
… Did he have bombs in that thing? Grenades?
I mean… I think I could survive one of those?
Sure as shit could come back from one if it did manage to hurt me too bad.
Hm, maybe try and find some other forms of healing before I actually tested it out.
I give the young man a smile, raising my hand up for a shake. "Nice to actually meet you in better circumstances."
He stares down at my hand like it was a snake he'd found in his boxer drawer, and for a second, I thought that he was just going to let the gesture remain there in awkwardness. Eventually he does take my hand, reluctantly, and gives me a nod that was just barely professional.
Meh, it was fine. I didn't let it bother me, not when he didn't know me this side of Detroit and that I basically ambushed him and his friend just a few days ago.
With meticulous slowness, I reach into my Inventory and bring out small blue vials holding glowing blue liquid inside, passing them to him and Bertha.
"What the sweet Jesus is this?" He asked, staring at the liquid inside like it was nitroglycerin.
"Healing potions." I said simply, barely giving them another glance. They tasted minty, and I'd had to learn to just accept the effects they had after drinking truckloads of them in Rabanastre's sewers. "Long as you haven't lost a limb, and any bullets you might have taken have an exit wound, these will be able to patch you up enough to find me. We don't have time for me to teach you any magic, though that might be on the table, but at least these will keep you from needing a hospital visit and having to answer some complicated questions."
"And how do we know this shit isn't poisonous?" He asked, actually managing to keep his anger from his voice, but I could see it in his eyes and the way his hands tightened around the vials.
Instead of answering, I closed my eyes and opened my hand towards the potions, one of which he put in my hands. Without a second thought, I downed the minty liquid and hummed at the warmth that spread through my body.
His scowl weakens, but the air of distrust wasn't going anywhere, which I more than understood. If I was in his position, I would probably be the same. I was, at one point, many, many years ago.
"Care to enlighten us at what we are doing?" George growled out.
Ah, right, that. Probably important.
"We are going to kidnap a Vampire. The leader of a particularly bloody pack that has been kidnapping people and Embracing them against their will." I said, carefully hiding the vitriol and rage that made me want to burn this entire city to the ground. Laying a map of the city out onto the table, I point towards a building deeper in the city, the various buildings surrounding it circled in red. "These apartment complexes are where he and his two Pack members have been hiding out during the day before they can wake up. A number of the people here have been converted into their personal Ghouls, most of them unwilling, but some of them being genuinely loyal."
"Speed and stealth are what we require tonight." Isabelle intoned quietly, dragging one finger down the streets and pointing towards the back of the building. "Two of us shall be waiting here in a getaway car, which I have already acquired outside. Getting inside is going to be the hard part, because there are always lookouts, whether they be Ghouls, or those that are connected to the ghouls."
Bertha frowns down at the map. "To think, they were right there under our noses. It's always the mundane that hides the strange."
There was a story to that, but that could wait for later.
"So, how exactly are you going to sneak inside without being found out by any of them? Cause I ain't killing any person that doesn't know what they're doing." George quickly growled out, and I couldn't hide the wide smile and approving nod I threw his way.
"Don't worry, I got a plan for that. Bertha, how do you feel about coming with me?" I asked, the woman giving me a slightly worried expression.
Eh, it'd be fine.
Damn, I was running out of closets to hide assholes in.
How many fucking ghouls did that prick drug? How much of his own blood had he used up to do that in the first place?
And most importantly, how many people had he killed to have said blood?
Too many corpses and lives made up that asshole's body, and it had to end. At least Bertha was around to help me move some of the bodies before they landed on the floor after I hit them in the face with Sleep.
On the bright side, the spell was close to reaching 13, and the length that it lasted had more than doubled from the mere 30 minutes.
Though, some of the first guys that we had thrown into a broom closet downstairs were bound to wake up in about 15 minutes so we had to hurry it up.
And the sun was about to set.
I don't know where the last of his pack was hiding, but I knew where he would be. On the third to last top floor, in one of the more lavish apartments that this place had.
Which of course meant that it was the most watched floor in the building, with the cleaning crew just 'happening' to be hanging around the apartment that we were heading towards. There were even some cameras mounted nearby. Not a problem for either of us thanks to the masks we were wearing, though Bertha had to wear something bulkier to hide the gear that she was carrying with her.
I didn't have said issue thanks to Inventory, but that wasn't something that I could share freely. Wonder how hard it would be to get my hands on some bags of holding…
Another little project to add for later.
"Can I help you?" A little old lady asked, dressed in an apron and bandana around her head, a mop in one hand while another was reaching into her pocket as she flashed a bright smile. Down the hall, a man that was leaning against a wall pushed himself off, dark eyes focusing on me and Bertha behind me.
Bertha caught the woman as I put her to sleep, the man beginning to charge towards us before I swept his feet out from under him and also put him to sleep. Good thing too, because my MP was starting to bottom out.
"Come on, we need to hurry." I said, throwing the knife that the guy had in his pocket at the camera while I pocketed the little pistol that the woman was about to try to shoot me with.
Bertha was about to follow inside behind me when I heard that cocking of a gun, and I pushed her down with the last of my telekinesis, bracing my hands in front of my face and the top of my chest as a shotgun pumped its shells into me.
-150HP
STATUS: BLEEDING: -5 HP EVERY FIVE SECONDS
I couldn't help the scream of pain and rage that tore out of my throat, but I did manage to kick towards the shotgun, grabbing it by the barrel and pointing it towards the ceiling, the gun barely budging in my hands. I punched the Vampire that had managed to wake up on his own somehow, grinning in savage glee as I felt something crunch and blood splattered onto the floor.
He was shorter than I was by at least half a foot, barely taller than I'd been in my previous life. A neat beard and stylish locks of black hanging down to his chin, the tips becoming drenched in scarlet as he snarled at me. Already, his nose was starting to fix itself, the bone and old flesh knitting itself back together before my eyes, the blood noticeably lessening the more his nose healed.
Good, the more blood he used, the easier what came next would be.
Faulkner Ring hissed, his fangs elongated in his mouth as his eyes flashed red in rage and hatred, a wordless scream in his throat. His hand punched forward, no doubt enhanced with his knowledge of Potence, the inhuman strength of the fist, no doubt able to shatter a normal human's spine into pieces.
I grabbed it with ease with one hand, growling myself as I pulled him in and headbutted him, no sense of style or teaching in it. Just seeing him made all the memories that Regina had left behind rise to the surface, the fury, both the young girl's and my own, making my body before my brain could catch up.
The grin on my face stretched as his skull cracked and crunched against the force of my own, enough so that I ignored the throbbing that I was feeling on my forehead.
Footsteps rushed past me, and a splinter from the door was stabbed into the chest of the Vampire, whatever movement and groans that he had been making ceased as his body was paralyzed. Bertha was breathing harder than I was, a wild look in her eyes, but thankfully unharmed.
It was enough of a sight to calm the rampant roar that had been my blood, and I forced myself to sigh out, doing my best to slow the tango that was my heart.
"You alright?" I asked, voice calm and measured, a trick that I'd had to pick up years ago when things in my life had turned rough.
"I should be asking you that." Bertha said, eyeing me cautiously as she stared at the motionless corpse that I stuffed in a sleeping bag I'd grabbed from my inventory.
"It's just some buckshot." I said with a wave of my hands as I started to telekinetically grab each of the little pellets embedded in my arms and chest. This time, I kept the scream of pan subdued, greedily downing a potion as my Mana emptied out again.
Glancing out the window, I frowned as the last rays of the sun set below the horizon, and I knew that we had mere minutes before this place was swarmed by Ghouls and Kindred.
Unfortunately, the Inventory wouldn't let me stuff the undead statue in a bag into it, so guess this meant that we were doing this the hard way.
"So, what, we just charge our way back down?" Bertha asked, hand reaching for the gun she had holstered at her hip.
"No, we take the fast way down. Also, sorry about this." I said as I downed an Ether, the sound of shouts and footsteps echoing behind us. The bag containing Faulkner strapped to my back.
Opening the door that led to the small balcony outside, Bertha shot me a perplexed look. "Sorry for wh-" She didn't finish as I lifted her up telekinetically and jumped over the edge of the balcony from the sixth floor. Of course, I didn't jump straight down.
Instead, I made sure to hop down the balconies one by one, Bertha grumbling every curse word under the sun as she floated gently above me, limbs flailing around.
Thank god the lights around here hadn't turned on yet, otherwise we would probably have more onlookers than I'd be comfortable with.
By the time we made it back to the car, she had already socked me in the shoulder, which I let happen when I saw how hard her hands were shaking. Was she scared of heights?
We jumped into the back of the car as I heard the pops of guns starting to go off behind us, Isabelle punching it before the door even closed all the way.
He woke up in an unfamiliar environment. How long he had been stuck in torpor, he didn't know, nor how he had been subdued in the first place. A woman had managed to take a shotgun blast to the chest, and then stopped his Vampiric punch with barely any effort before she shattered his skull into pieces.
His brain had remained intact enough for his body to have regenerated, but that meant that what little blood he'd had left was used up to keep him awake. Already the hunger was building in the back of his mind, the constant need to feed on the prey that walked on two legs crooning and whispering to him gentle promises.
If it wasn't for his fear, he would have embraced the Beast as was his virtue. Attempting to rise only answered him with a bevy of rattling chains, his arms and legs constrained against the wall with links of blue and white that did not look like steel. Yet, they held, even as he wrenched and pulled with all the strength he could muster.
"Whoever you are, you have made an enormous mistake!" He roared out into the darkness of the basement, the sound of wildlife outside of the cracked windows of his concrete and steel prison silencing against his cries.
The only light that he could see came down from the stairs on the far side of the vast room, echoing footsteps approaching him with an almost lazy grace.
That's right. Come to feed me, you calf.
"Whatever mistakes you think I've made, I would instead put as little dots on my bucket list." A woman's familiar voice called down to him, the steady clips of her footsteps giving her voice a soft timber as he licked his fangs in anticipation.
"Then it's a surprise that you haven't become gator feed already." He snarled out, stretching the blue chains as far as he could, flexing and pulling to the point that the shackles on his wrists and ankles began to cut into his limbs. A futile gesture that he hoped would pass unnoticed to his captor. After all, they had no idea that he was almost out of blood.
A harsh laugh echoed down to him as he finally saw her feet appear down the steps, familiar jeans, and unfamiliar hoodie hiding his unknown future meal.
"If a gator was enough to put me down, then what does that say about you then, Faulkner?" A chill ran down his spine as he heard his name spoken to him. Not the name that his siblings in the Sabbat knew. No, his real name. A name that only his packmates knew, and kept because of the Vinculum. "Besides, who is going to come and save you? Robert? We both know that the only reason why he stays with you and that Tzimisce bitch is because his sire is a hateful piece of shit."
"Who are you with? A Camarilla dog, or one of those sightless Anarchs thinking that you can cause chaos by focusing on me!" He roared out, pulling again, this time mostly in defiance instead of intimidation. He knew that he was going to die here now. There was no way that whoever this was would allow him to leave here intact.
Again, she laughed like a witch with a cauldron, raising a hand and summoning an orb of white light that hurt just to look at, the Beast screeching in fear at the coalescence of something that he knew could kill him. "Oh no Faulkner, I'm not a vampire. Completely, and utterly human. Though, not the same one that you would know."
She took off the hood from her face, and he recognized her immediately. Little Regina. A clubgoer that he'd had wrapped around his finger. Maybe she would have one day been good enough to be one of his personal Ghouls instead of cannon fodder, but he hadn't had much hopes at the time.
Why would he care when the little bitch had turned into a junkie because his gift to her had been too much for her weak will to endure?
But this wasn't her.
It couldn't be. Not because of the strange magics and strength that he had subdued him with, or these chains that were probably hers, but because of the way he glared at him.
An expression of fury and satisfaction that looked alien on the formerly frail girl, the gauntness of her cheeks gone, a little paler than she had been a week ago when he'd sent her out with Bone Lily to ambush those Camarilla idiots, neither of them coming back.
"Who the fuck are you?" He growled out. "What did you do with Bone?"
"Oh, don't worry, your little psychopath is a nice and toasty pile of ashes on the back of some poor schmucks car. Might even be in a police bin as evidence. You know, if they had even collected anything instead of torching it." She stopped a few inches out of his reach, hands grasping towards her in futility as she smiled savagely at him. "As for who I am… you could think of me as someone picking up where Regina left off. She's gone, of course. Died fighting the useless war that you and the rest of the Sabbat are so insistent on fighting."
"And what would you know of the fight? Of our crusade against those who sleep and in effort for our Father!?" He roared out, panicking again.
"I'll let you in on a little secret. Caine hates all of you. I promise. The old man is so tired of being reminded about every one of his failures that he just wants to get away from all of you. After all, the last time that he got involved, the Camarilla had a little civil war, and I think that you know what happened after that. But I didn't keep you alive just to drop lore bombs on your head."
He was about to retort and bite towards her, when another white light appeared above her, and the previous one shot down into his left leg.
A pain, a burning that felt so much like the sun blinded his existence, the Beast, and his consciousness screeching in agonizing pain as he curled into a ball on the floor, clutching at the burned stump of his leg.
"When is the next Mass Embrace happening." She asked, ignoring his screaming and cries. "Better yet, where are the last batch that managed to dig themselves out and passed your little test."
"What…huff… makes you think I'm going to answer that!" He growled out in reply.
He lost another limb in reply.
In a haze, he told her. Next week. The same place on the outskirts of town. A bishop and a number of priests would be there to see towards the right, and take their pick of the newest soldiers in their war.
Anything to make the burning stop.
Another flash of white ended his life, the last words that he heard echoing with him as he died.
"I was going to beat you to death, but honestly, I just want to put you down. Goodbye Faulkner. You won't be missed, or remembered. Not even a footnote."
In that moment between the end of his unlife, he thought he could hear the screams of his daughters again. The same ones that he'd heard before his sire had sicced his frenzied state on them.
And he wished that he could cry again like he did then.
She didn't get any XP or GP from my time in the Waterways, so there was one theory that I had out the window, but it wasn't truly that big of a deal.
We could work on grinding her up later on when we actually went on the offensive.
The Sabbat were still gathering themselves, probably mostly higher ranking Kindred meeting right now, preparing for the storm they had no idea was brewing.
Now that I was thinking about it though, if they went to ground, finding them wasn't going to be an issue. At least, not if I played my cards right.
Detect Undead was a simple spell, and I needed to experiment with it first, but first I was going to need to catch a Vampire intact.
Which meant that I needed to store them somewhere.
Ergo, I needed to meet with Bertha, and I had to kick myself because I forgot to get her phone number.
At least because of Isabelle, money for that wasn't that big of an issue.
I would have a smartphone right now if the Technocracy wasn't insistent on keeping their precious timeline. What did it matter when the world was putrid and rotting from the inside anyways?
Meaning our meeting had to be face to face, and she had me waiting parked behind her bar at noon like I was some sort of dealer.
I mean… I used to be in my teens, but that's neither here nor there.
"What?" Bertha asked through gritted teeth, head shifting back and forth in the alley, eyes searching for anyone that might be nearby.
"I'm planning on doing some… work tonight. Do you have someplace that we can… store away a prisoner for a few nights?" I asked.
Instead of answering me, she sent me a withering look. "Maybe. I have some property just outside of the city. Why?"
"Because we need answers, and I think that it would be best to learn this way."
"What brought this on? Just a few days ago you were erring caution instead of action."
"Let's just say that I picked up a few new tricks." I said as I let a small crackle of electricity buzz through my fingers, causing her hair to stand on end just a bit.
"By any chance, is this going to be a solo thing for you, or can we actually go and learn a thing or two." Bertha didn't quite growl it out, ok no, yeah that was totally a growl.
I could just tell her no… but it might be best to see what she and George could do out in the field. "Fine. Got anywhere that we can meet up later today?" I asked, knowing that if we wanted to get this done as quietly as possible, then we were going to have to do it as close to sundown as possible.
"Yeah, just meet me back at the auto shop after 8PM." Bertha said without a second thought, turning back into her bar without another word.
Well, I like that she's at least to the point. Less bullshit and subterfuge that way.
Waiting, while definitely not one of my skills, is still something that old age taught me to at least deal with while waiting a few streets away from the autoshop. Well, having the system and reading through all the goodies that we would need definitely helped, with Isabelle keeping watch through the front while I hid in the back of the car.
Most of my purchases to finally get Runesmithing underway was going to have to wait until I actually got my own place, or maybe that Bertha or George could help with. Apparently the large lady had some cash to her name, because having that many places that she could crash at didn't come from nowhere.
I at least had spells out the ass, enough that I was basically a mini nuke that probably turn an entire block into an elemental storm big enough that I'd catch the attention of every mage and demon in the city.
Which is why anything more dangerous than a simple Fireball was staying locked up like that Antediluvian underneath New York.
Please, ancient evil vampire, please stay asleep until I can find a way to get you well down before you turn the city that never sleeps into another Bangladesh.
"What is next on the list on your new shopping list?" Isabelle asked offhandedly while staring out the window as cars slowly drove out of the autoshop driveway.
"Trying to see if we can get our hands on some wards and anti scrying methods. Along with some… insurance against anything that might try to slip through the Umbra."
"And that is?" She asked, not even surprised that I was dropping another word she'd never heard of before.
"Ah, right, vampires don't really know that much about the Umbra compared to most of the other night folk." I said offhandedly as I added another quest to the list of stuff that I needed to get done. There were a bunch of the more useful skills locked away behind some quests. "The Umbra is… weird thing to explain. They're basically other planes that exist… underneath this one? I think? Never could wrap my brain around how all of them worked with each other. Its where spirits reside, along with a bunch of other crap that makes its way onto this side, like the Dreaming, ghosts and a bunch of other crap that is harder to explain than it really should be."
And trying to get into that place with an Avatar was a good way to get your soul rent into pieces. I didn't know if me not having one of those made me exempt from that fate worse than death, but I wasn't in any hurry to find out one way or the other.
"As for what I'm buying right now, just some stuff that I'll be able to use later for some future projects." Quicksilver, the specific kind that a lot of Runemasters needed, was worth a pretty penny, but crucial for a lot of runes. Just getting the materials to make an anvil, because the Anvil was the most important tool for constructing runes, took out a third of my GP.
"Any chance that there are any goodies in there that I could use?" She asked, a playful smile on her face as she glanced at her own inventory screen with a glance.
I snort. "Please, I think it would be easier to find something that would be useful for you rather than me." Oh Disgaea, my little number hell, you were always full of options weren't you? I pass her an Assist and Hawk Eye scroll, two passive abilities that might, or might not level up with further uses. "These two should help against some tougher opponents we might find out there. Especially if it's us ganging up against someone else."
Her eyes went a bit glassy as she accepted the two little tomes, and I blinked in surprise as they just disappeared in a cloud of dust. Well… huh. Guess I was going to have to be careful about some of those. Maybe we could print out some copies and see if they were still usable.
Eventually we strode in where there weren't any cameras nearby, getting in through the back where Bertha had told us and made our way down into the basement.
Bertha was there, changed out into a long sleeved shirt that would have been bad in the summer, and cargo pants that had a few bulges that were most likely guns and knives.
George was in the corner of the room, facing the stairs, eyes locked on the both of us while one of his hands twitched occasionally towards the bag sitting next to him.
… Did he have bombs in that thing? Grenades?
I mean… I think I could survive one of those?
Sure as shit could come back from one if it did manage to hurt me too bad.
Hm, maybe try and find some other forms of healing before I actually tested it out.
I give the young man a smile, raising my hand up for a shake. "Nice to actually meet you in better circumstances."
He stares down at my hand like it was a snake he'd found in his boxer drawer, and for a second, I thought that he was just going to let the gesture remain there in awkwardness. Eventually he does take my hand, reluctantly, and gives me a nod that was just barely professional.
Meh, it was fine. I didn't let it bother me, not when he didn't know me this side of Detroit and that I basically ambushed him and his friend just a few days ago.
With meticulous slowness, I reach into my Inventory and bring out small blue vials holding glowing blue liquid inside, passing them to him and Bertha.
"What the sweet Jesus is this?" He asked, staring at the liquid inside like it was nitroglycerin.
"Healing potions." I said simply, barely giving them another glance. They tasted minty, and I'd had to learn to just accept the effects they had after drinking truckloads of them in Rabanastre's sewers. "Long as you haven't lost a limb, and any bullets you might have taken have an exit wound, these will be able to patch you up enough to find me. We don't have time for me to teach you any magic, though that might be on the table, but at least these will keep you from needing a hospital visit and having to answer some complicated questions."
"And how do we know this shit isn't poisonous?" He asked, actually managing to keep his anger from his voice, but I could see it in his eyes and the way his hands tightened around the vials.
Instead of answering, I closed my eyes and opened my hand towards the potions, one of which he put in my hands. Without a second thought, I downed the minty liquid and hummed at the warmth that spread through my body.
His scowl weakens, but the air of distrust wasn't going anywhere, which I more than understood. If I was in his position, I would probably be the same. I was, at one point, many, many years ago.
"Care to enlighten us at what we are doing?" George growled out.
Ah, right, that. Probably important.
"We are going to kidnap a Vampire. The leader of a particularly bloody pack that has been kidnapping people and Embracing them against their will." I said, carefully hiding the vitriol and rage that made me want to burn this entire city to the ground. Laying a map of the city out onto the table, I point towards a building deeper in the city, the various buildings surrounding it circled in red. "These apartment complexes are where he and his two Pack members have been hiding out during the day before they can wake up. A number of the people here have been converted into their personal Ghouls, most of them unwilling, but some of them being genuinely loyal."
"Speed and stealth are what we require tonight." Isabelle intoned quietly, dragging one finger down the streets and pointing towards the back of the building. "Two of us shall be waiting here in a getaway car, which I have already acquired outside. Getting inside is going to be the hard part, because there are always lookouts, whether they be Ghouls, or those that are connected to the ghouls."
Bertha frowns down at the map. "To think, they were right there under our noses. It's always the mundane that hides the strange."
There was a story to that, but that could wait for later.
"So, how exactly are you going to sneak inside without being found out by any of them? Cause I ain't killing any person that doesn't know what they're doing." George quickly growled out, and I couldn't hide the wide smile and approving nod I threw his way.
"Don't worry, I got a plan for that. Bertha, how do you feel about coming with me?" I asked, the woman giving me a slightly worried expression.
Eh, it'd be fine.
Damn, I was running out of closets to hide assholes in.
How many fucking ghouls did that prick drug? How much of his own blood had he used up to do that in the first place?
And most importantly, how many people had he killed to have said blood?
Too many corpses and lives made up that asshole's body, and it had to end. At least Bertha was around to help me move some of the bodies before they landed on the floor after I hit them in the face with Sleep.
On the bright side, the spell was close to reaching 13, and the length that it lasted had more than doubled from the mere 30 minutes.
Though, some of the first guys that we had thrown into a broom closet downstairs were bound to wake up in about 15 minutes so we had to hurry it up.
And the sun was about to set.
I don't know where the last of his pack was hiding, but I knew where he would be. On the third to last top floor, in one of the more lavish apartments that this place had.
Which of course meant that it was the most watched floor in the building, with the cleaning crew just 'happening' to be hanging around the apartment that we were heading towards. There were even some cameras mounted nearby. Not a problem for either of us thanks to the masks we were wearing, though Bertha had to wear something bulkier to hide the gear that she was carrying with her.
I didn't have said issue thanks to Inventory, but that wasn't something that I could share freely. Wonder how hard it would be to get my hands on some bags of holding…
Another little project to add for later.
"Can I help you?" A little old lady asked, dressed in an apron and bandana around her head, a mop in one hand while another was reaching into her pocket as she flashed a bright smile. Down the hall, a man that was leaning against a wall pushed himself off, dark eyes focusing on me and Bertha behind me.
Bertha caught the woman as I put her to sleep, the man beginning to charge towards us before I swept his feet out from under him and also put him to sleep. Good thing too, because my MP was starting to bottom out.
"Come on, we need to hurry." I said, throwing the knife that the guy had in his pocket at the camera while I pocketed the little pistol that the woman was about to try to shoot me with.
Bertha was about to follow inside behind me when I heard that cocking of a gun, and I pushed her down with the last of my telekinesis, bracing my hands in front of my face and the top of my chest as a shotgun pumped its shells into me.
-150HP
STATUS: BLEEDING: -5 HP EVERY FIVE SECONDS
I couldn't help the scream of pain and rage that tore out of my throat, but I did manage to kick towards the shotgun, grabbing it by the barrel and pointing it towards the ceiling, the gun barely budging in my hands. I punched the Vampire that had managed to wake up on his own somehow, grinning in savage glee as I felt something crunch and blood splattered onto the floor.
He was shorter than I was by at least half a foot, barely taller than I'd been in my previous life. A neat beard and stylish locks of black hanging down to his chin, the tips becoming drenched in scarlet as he snarled at me. Already, his nose was starting to fix itself, the bone and old flesh knitting itself back together before my eyes, the blood noticeably lessening the more his nose healed.
Good, the more blood he used, the easier what came next would be.
Faulkner Ring hissed, his fangs elongated in his mouth as his eyes flashed red in rage and hatred, a wordless scream in his throat. His hand punched forward, no doubt enhanced with his knowledge of Potence, the inhuman strength of the fist, no doubt able to shatter a normal human's spine into pieces.
I grabbed it with ease with one hand, growling myself as I pulled him in and headbutted him, no sense of style or teaching in it. Just seeing him made all the memories that Regina had left behind rise to the surface, the fury, both the young girl's and my own, making my body before my brain could catch up.
The grin on my face stretched as his skull cracked and crunched against the force of my own, enough so that I ignored the throbbing that I was feeling on my forehead.
Footsteps rushed past me, and a splinter from the door was stabbed into the chest of the Vampire, whatever movement and groans that he had been making ceased as his body was paralyzed. Bertha was breathing harder than I was, a wild look in her eyes, but thankfully unharmed.
It was enough of a sight to calm the rampant roar that had been my blood, and I forced myself to sigh out, doing my best to slow the tango that was my heart.
"You alright?" I asked, voice calm and measured, a trick that I'd had to pick up years ago when things in my life had turned rough.
"I should be asking you that." Bertha said, eyeing me cautiously as she stared at the motionless corpse that I stuffed in a sleeping bag I'd grabbed from my inventory.
"It's just some buckshot." I said with a wave of my hands as I started to telekinetically grab each of the little pellets embedded in my arms and chest. This time, I kept the scream of pan subdued, greedily downing a potion as my Mana emptied out again.
Glancing out the window, I frowned as the last rays of the sun set below the horizon, and I knew that we had mere minutes before this place was swarmed by Ghouls and Kindred.
Unfortunately, the Inventory wouldn't let me stuff the undead statue in a bag into it, so guess this meant that we were doing this the hard way.
"So, what, we just charge our way back down?" Bertha asked, hand reaching for the gun she had holstered at her hip.
"No, we take the fast way down. Also, sorry about this." I said as I downed an Ether, the sound of shouts and footsteps echoing behind us. The bag containing Faulkner strapped to my back.
Opening the door that led to the small balcony outside, Bertha shot me a perplexed look. "Sorry for wh-" She didn't finish as I lifted her up telekinetically and jumped over the edge of the balcony from the sixth floor. Of course, I didn't jump straight down.
Instead, I made sure to hop down the balconies one by one, Bertha grumbling every curse word under the sun as she floated gently above me, limbs flailing around.
Thank god the lights around here hadn't turned on yet, otherwise we would probably have more onlookers than I'd be comfortable with.
By the time we made it back to the car, she had already socked me in the shoulder, which I let happen when I saw how hard her hands were shaking. Was she scared of heights?
We jumped into the back of the car as I heard the pops of guns starting to go off behind us, Isabelle punching it before the door even closed all the way.
He woke up in an unfamiliar environment. How long he had been stuck in torpor, he didn't know, nor how he had been subdued in the first place. A woman had managed to take a shotgun blast to the chest, and then stopped his Vampiric punch with barely any effort before she shattered his skull into pieces.
His brain had remained intact enough for his body to have regenerated, but that meant that what little blood he'd had left was used up to keep him awake. Already the hunger was building in the back of his mind, the constant need to feed on the prey that walked on two legs crooning and whispering to him gentle promises.
If it wasn't for his fear, he would have embraced the Beast as was his virtue. Attempting to rise only answered him with a bevy of rattling chains, his arms and legs constrained against the wall with links of blue and white that did not look like steel. Yet, they held, even as he wrenched and pulled with all the strength he could muster.
"Whoever you are, you have made an enormous mistake!" He roared out into the darkness of the basement, the sound of wildlife outside of the cracked windows of his concrete and steel prison silencing against his cries.
The only light that he could see came down from the stairs on the far side of the vast room, echoing footsteps approaching him with an almost lazy grace.
That's right. Come to feed me, you calf.
"Whatever mistakes you think I've made, I would instead put as little dots on my bucket list." A woman's familiar voice called down to him, the steady clips of her footsteps giving her voice a soft timber as he licked his fangs in anticipation.
"Then it's a surprise that you haven't become gator feed already." He snarled out, stretching the blue chains as far as he could, flexing and pulling to the point that the shackles on his wrists and ankles began to cut into his limbs. A futile gesture that he hoped would pass unnoticed to his captor. After all, they had no idea that he was almost out of blood.
A harsh laugh echoed down to him as he finally saw her feet appear down the steps, familiar jeans, and unfamiliar hoodie hiding his unknown future meal.
"If a gator was enough to put me down, then what does that say about you then, Faulkner?" A chill ran down his spine as he heard his name spoken to him. Not the name that his siblings in the Sabbat knew. No, his real name. A name that only his packmates knew, and kept because of the Vinculum. "Besides, who is going to come and save you? Robert? We both know that the only reason why he stays with you and that Tzimisce bitch is because his sire is a hateful piece of shit."
"Who are you with? A Camarilla dog, or one of those sightless Anarchs thinking that you can cause chaos by focusing on me!" He roared out, pulling again, this time mostly in defiance instead of intimidation. He knew that he was going to die here now. There was no way that whoever this was would allow him to leave here intact.
Again, she laughed like a witch with a cauldron, raising a hand and summoning an orb of white light that hurt just to look at, the Beast screeching in fear at the coalescence of something that he knew could kill him. "Oh no Faulkner, I'm not a vampire. Completely, and utterly human. Though, not the same one that you would know."
She took off the hood from her face, and he recognized her immediately. Little Regina. A clubgoer that he'd had wrapped around his finger. Maybe she would have one day been good enough to be one of his personal Ghouls instead of cannon fodder, but he hadn't had much hopes at the time.
Why would he care when the little bitch had turned into a junkie because his gift to her had been too much for her weak will to endure?
But this wasn't her.
It couldn't be. Not because of the strange magics and strength that he had subdued him with, or these chains that were probably hers, but because of the way he glared at him.
An expression of fury and satisfaction that looked alien on the formerly frail girl, the gauntness of her cheeks gone, a little paler than she had been a week ago when he'd sent her out with Bone Lily to ambush those Camarilla idiots, neither of them coming back.
"Who the fuck are you?" He growled out. "What did you do with Bone?"
"Oh, don't worry, your little psychopath is a nice and toasty pile of ashes on the back of some poor schmucks car. Might even be in a police bin as evidence. You know, if they had even collected anything instead of torching it." She stopped a few inches out of his reach, hands grasping towards her in futility as she smiled savagely at him. "As for who I am… you could think of me as someone picking up where Regina left off. She's gone, of course. Died fighting the useless war that you and the rest of the Sabbat are so insistent on fighting."
"And what would you know of the fight? Of our crusade against those who sleep and in effort for our Father!?" He roared out, panicking again.
"I'll let you in on a little secret. Caine hates all of you. I promise. The old man is so tired of being reminded about every one of his failures that he just wants to get away from all of you. After all, the last time that he got involved, the Camarilla had a little civil war, and I think that you know what happened after that. But I didn't keep you alive just to drop lore bombs on your head."
He was about to retort and bite towards her, when another white light appeared above her, and the previous one shot down into his left leg.
A pain, a burning that felt so much like the sun blinded his existence, the Beast, and his consciousness screeching in agonizing pain as he curled into a ball on the floor, clutching at the burned stump of his leg.
"When is the next Mass Embrace happening." She asked, ignoring his screaming and cries. "Better yet, where are the last batch that managed to dig themselves out and passed your little test."
"What…huff… makes you think I'm going to answer that!" He growled out in reply.
He lost another limb in reply.
In a haze, he told her. Next week. The same place on the outskirts of town. A bishop and a number of priests would be there to see towards the right, and take their pick of the newest soldiers in their war.
Anything to make the burning stop.
Another flash of white ended his life, the last words that he heard echoing with him as he died.
"I was going to beat you to death, but honestly, I just want to put you down. Goodbye Faulkner. You won't be missed, or remembered. Not even a footnote."
In that moment between the end of his unlife, he thought he could hear the screams of his daughters again. The same ones that he'd heard before his sire had sicced his frenzied state on them.
And he wished that he could cry again like he did then.
- Location
- Missouri
Well damn. Now I actually feel a little sorry for the guy.
Not sorry enough to actually wish he'd lived, mind you, but sorry enough I'm glad she opted to end him clean.
- Location
- New Zealand
It's pretty solidly in the nature of WOD vampires, really.
They're usually pretty decent people (or were), completely destroyed by addiction to blood.
Or, they're a slave to their Beast, which is basically self-destructive behaviors mixed with extreme instincts, and so they're not all that different from rabid animals.
They're usually pretty decent people (or were), completely destroyed by addiction to blood.
Or, they're a slave to their Beast, which is basically self-destructive behaviors mixed with extreme instincts, and so they're not all that different from rabid animals.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly I cannot *wait* for her to start really leveraging her runecrafting power, especially if she eventually goes to get lessons from the Dawi at some point, maybe help them with some things if she's strong enough.
Though how much help they'll accept from a random human mage is questionable I suppose.
Regardless, runecraft alone might let her stabilize the failing plane, given how well it works against the warp of built correctly. Though she might need to do geomancy as well if she wanted to find a solution and not just a stop gap on that research branch
Though how much help they'll accept from a random human mage is questionable I suppose.
Regardless, runecraft alone might let her stabilize the failing plane, given how well it works against the warp of built correctly. Though she might need to do geomancy as well if she wanted to find a solution and not just a stop gap on that research branch
- Pronouns
- Male
The one thing that I do like about Vampire, is that every Kindred is a tragedy in writing. Whether it be by their own hand, or the hands above them.
I just despise how there is no way to truly heal in Vampire.
Especially because there are many Kindred out there that had no choice in what they became.
The inevitability of that is because the Blood is literally all they have left. They can't eat, drink, have sex, and are stuck in the night never to see the light of day. It's no wonder most Vampires eventually become nothing more than blood addicts.
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Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
from what i recall it IS possible, just difficult?
I mean, they can, if they have high humanity and stuff?
its a struggle, but possible.
- Pronouns
- Male
WE know this, but most Vampire's don't. Most Kindred society don't even know about Galconda or other more potent abilities. All most new Vampire's know is what their sire tells them, and most sires have long lost their humanity.
Humanity as a system isn't something that Vampire's know, it's their mental health which is on a timer of counting down after they have turned.
Vampire, like the rest of the splits, has its hope hidden and buried long ago by those that want to perpetuate their power. And it's something that most podcasts pr live plays I've seen perpetuate. The amount of storytellers put there I have seen create a story about how all Vampire's are inevitably going to destroy everything they touch no matter how hard they try is what turned me off from playing Vampire in general.
Well... when vampires aren't an allegory of rabies, they are often an allegory of the cycle of abuse so... yeah. 'Things go to shit around/with them' is a theme for a reason.
Also, while I'll understand if you stick with the canon games set in the World of Darkness, it's enough of a kitchen sink already, Princess: The Hopeful may offer SI-you some genuinely helpful allies.
If you can deal with the lot of them averaging naive, idealistic and young. But then, it's the magical girl fan game for the setting, comes with the territory.
Also, while I'll understand if you stick with the canon games set in the World of Darkness, it's enough of a kitchen sink already, Princess: The Hopeful may offer SI-you some genuinely helpful allies.
If you can deal with the lot of them averaging naive, idealistic and young. But then, it's the magical girl fan game for the setting, comes with the territory.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't think that spell works on undead? Something about their souls being too full of negative energy? That might be false though, it's been a long time since I've played
You need to kill them first.
Digging A Few Holes
- Pronouns
- Male
Bertha and George weren't quite shaking when I came back upstairs, but they stayed relatively close to the windows, the shaggy haired man in particular twitching towards it as he glanced my way.
Isabelle at least didn't look at me any different, unsurprising given that she probably had as much of a roaring fire in her heart as I did after… well everything.
Killing Faulkner, the asshole that had turned Regina into a shell of her former self didn't make me feel any better. But I already knew that it wasn't going to. Vengeance was never about making yourself feel better, not really. It was balancing the scales and allowing that bottled rage out into the world instead of inward. Though, in many circumstances, it was both.
But, at the very least, I knew that he couldn't hurt any more people, and there were countless others that he had killed before Regina had ever drunk his blood.
"What is a Mass Embrace?" George asked, keeping his voice steady, even if I knew that I probably scared the shit out of him after my little 'interrogation' downstairs.
"It's how some of the Sabbat keep their numbers up. Keep in mind, the Sabbat itself is pretty big, and there are plenty of people that don't like the practice. But… well, given how many of their lot have been dropping around like flies, both because of us, and because the Camarilla have been launching little strikes into their territory, they need to keep their numbers up. They're going to kidnap a bunch of people, turn them, and knock them out before they can frenzy so they can bury them. Any that manage to dig their way out will then be fed and 'initiated' into the organization. Though, most of them are going to be little more than disposable meatbags for the group to throw away when they need to." Regina hadn't been to one before, she hadn't been deemed 'worthy' enough to witness a 'holy' ritual, which was probably a good thing. She might have been fed to one of the Kindred that actually managed to make it out.
Bertha shivered in place, and George looked like he was going to be sick. "So, there's no limit to how many Vampires can be made?"
"The only limit is how much blood a Sire is willing to spare. And how much he needs to feed to fuel the act. And there are plenty of bodies in the city." The words were hollow and ashen in my mouth. A chilling fact that only plummeted the dark mood that had already hung over the room like a weighted cloak.
"Miami is infested with them, isn't it?" Bertha asked, the stubborn fire in her eye dimmer than I had ever seen it.
"Yes. As is every large city in the world. Any place filled with people, filled with blood, is going to attract them like the mosquitoes that they are." That reminded me, I was going to need to look through the Instant Quests to see if I could find that in there.
"What, there aren't any out in the countryside?" George asked, almost hysterically.
"Yeah, there are. That's where the Nosferatu like to hang out. The latter being… physically changed the most out of all the vampire clans. Let's just say that you'll know what one is after you see it. And that's also where the Werewolves tend to stick around." Poor guy let out a hysterical laugh that I was actually feeling right about now as I started to remember just how fucked this world was. How many horrors hid in the shadows and beyond. The web of a weaver choking destruction to the point its thrashing was corrupting and protruding existence.
Individually, most of the problems could be taken care of. I know of at least a few Gamers that could solo a bevy of this shit. The problem was the scale of everything.
Everything was shit, and trying to fix it was probably a futile task.
But, if futility was the end result, I might as well make sure that as many of those fuckers go down in flames with me.
"On the bright side, we can at least start helping here and there." I said with a cheer that I didn't really feel, but I learned how to fake it in the last Depression back home. Sometimes the only way to keep living is by convincing yourself that there was a reason to do it.
I prefer sheer spite, but hey, that wasn't enough for most people.
"And you think that you're enough to fight these things?" George asked, hysterics not quite quelled yet, and wanting to take out his anger on someone else.
"With enough time, sure. Maybe. But the problem isn't just killing them all, it's to keep the rest of them from coming in and taking over once the power vacuum takes residence. We get rid of the Sabbat here in Miami, and then the Camarilla are going to try and take over. They've been trying to send their little hit squads into the city for years, but haven't made much headway when the Sabbat outnumber them and have control of the city. It is much easier to defend your home than it is to attack someone else's after all."
Turning away from the group staring at me, demanding explanations that would help them sleep at night, I glance around the old warehouse that might have once been a bustle of industry. Old rusted equipment lay there, forgotten, dusty and brown with time and abandonment. The ceiling of the building was barely holding together too, various holes allowing the warm breeze to whistle down onto our heads.
It had been a curious anomaly that I noticed in this world. There were a lot more abandoned buildings just… out in the world. Instead of being torn down and changed to a parking lot, or a little space for a company to start reaching their claws into the city, plots of land and buildings were just left there to rot. Factories, shops, warehouses. Sure, you saw plenty of those back home during this time, but it just felt like there were more of these places just scattered around the world.
There were also a lot more stone and gothic buildings hanging around. A lot more churches with gargoyles too. Sometimes I'd forget that I'm in Miami and start thinking that this was Gotham city or something.
A reflection to just how rotted the world was? On multiple courses towards the end? Whether it be Gehenna, the Wyrm, or Ascension gone wrong?
"So, got any plans for this place?" I asked Bertha, the two friends whispering towards each other while sending glances towards me and Isabelle every now and then.
"Not really. I bought this place more to flip it eventually… but things didn't work out quite like how I thought it was going to."
"Buyer flaked basically." I said offhandedly, staring at the vast building that I couldn't help but start to customize in my head. Construction had been one of those little skills that I had to learn after the second time my house blew up.
Wait, was there a construction skill somewhere? Not like I was scraping for points.
"How's about we make a deal then?" I asked with a smile on my face, knowing that there was no way that she was going to say no.
Bertha and George glanced at each other again. "Didn't you promise that you were going to teach us some things first?"
"Of course, we can do that either tonight, tomorrow in the morning if you would prefer. But this deal will only help you, trust me." Wait… couldn't I use that for building out something underground? "After all, we're going to need a place for us to meet up, and I can't exactly teach you magic or how to use a rune properly in the middle of a Denny's."
I ignore Bertha mouthing 'Denny's' at George, who himself looks confused, starting to try and imagine just what we were going to need. The electrical work was going to be a pain in the ass, though maybe a power source wouldn't be too hard.
Oh good, that Engineering skill was helping build stuff underground, that was good to know. I was always shit at math back home.
Maybe I could look up some textbooks on architecture and other skills. My driving was already a lot better than it had been in life, I felt like I could probably do some action movie stuff with one already.
"You seriously want to use this place? For what? It's a giant junkpile." George said with a grunt of disgust as he glanced around at the darkened building, the only illuminating light the lamp that Bertha had brought with her from her car.
"Sure, but I promise you, that I can whip this place into something much better in just a week. Won't be perfect, but I kinda need a secure place for some of my more… experimental projects." Runesmithing wasn't exactly something that one could do with just an anvil and some heat. Well, maybe you could, but doing it that was a surefire way to be visited by black suits.
And unlike the Dwarfs, I wasn't afraid to experiment with creating new Runes. If I had it right, then the true sources of power for the Runes were the magic that they captured, and the actual engraving itself was more like a blueprint for how it should react, along with the proper chants and materials.
I had a number of Runes that I already knew how to make. Probably not very well at first, but we'd get there eventually. Besides… my magic wasn't like the Winds of Magic. It was cheating at what the proper rules should be, and that was just fine with me.
"Fine. You can do whatever you want, just as long as you manage to keep anyone from finding out. The moment that the cops or someone else finds you though, I'm going to pretend you're just some crazy lady that's been squatting here." Bertha said with the faintest trace of amusement in her eyes, tempered just a little hotter at what might be fear.
Of me?
Well… I couldn't blame her for that. Not after I just tortured Faulkner downstairs for information.
I brought up the menu, typing in what I was looking for, and smiled at what I found.
And it was such a simple quest too.
Without waiting for a word from any of them, I walk towards Isabelle and grab her hand, the French woman giving me a suspicious raised eyebrow that freezes when she sees the menu in front of me. "We'll be right back!" I promised both of my little trainees, pressing down the Y button just as Isabelle opened her mouth to protest.
The warehouse was gone, replaced with craggy mountains and trees as far as the eyes could see.
"What have you dragged us into?" Isabelle asked, giving me a very unhappy glare, which I ignored.
"Just a little quest that we can get done in a few hours, not a big deal."
"For what, pray tell, have you taken us to another world for if it is so trivial?" There was ice in her voice again, but I was too busy reading through the latest communication from the system.
Well, that was a lot more pressing than I thought it was going to be.
"Something that is going to help make sure that we don't get swatted when someone comes looking for our base. We need a place to hide, after all." The list of crap that I needed to get just to make sure we don't die when we really start making waves was getting longer and longer by the day.
Honestly, finding the trail that the men took out of the caves wasn't that hard thanks to Investigation. Talk about a cheat skill that basically helped me deduce most things. I wasn't quite Sherlock Holmes, but maybe give me a few years, and I'd get to that level on my own.
And I swear, even without the skill being a high level, it felt like my brain was making more and more connections than it should, far faster than a normal brain could process. Maybe a side effect of my higher stats?
Regardless, a couple of Hastes on the both of us had us arriving at the nearest town within just a few minutes, and from there the trail became a hell of a lot harder to follow thanks to the dozens of other tracks mingled on top of theirs.
That was where things became… trickier.
Couldn't exactly just waltz into town without catching some attention, both because of our clothes, and because we obviously weren't from around here. The language barrier was another little problem, but that's what Sneak was for. Albeit, Isabelle was the one better at skulduggery than I was.
It was an Earth kingdom village alright, if the green clothing, stone buildings and the guards moving the stone doorway using their fists was any indication.
"What the hell is that?" Isabelle asked with a thick accent in surprise.
"Earthbending. Some of the people in this world are capable of bending one of the four classical elements. Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. The only person in this world that can bend more, as in all of them, is someone that is reincarnated in a cycle. Don't know who it is right now, but most likely it's the last Airbender that managed to avoid the purge of his culture and is currently frozen in a giant ball of ice in the ocean." My words are clinical and unfeeling, but I can feel the burn in my heart at thinking about that poor kid and what he is going to go through in the coming years. Finding him isn't something that I can exactly do, he might be somewhere in the South Pole right now, or he might be a glacier just flowing around somewhere underwater. Who knew.
And going conqueror was only going to end badly for me anyway.
"And a scroll of all things is supposed to teach you how to be an Earthbender?" She asked rhetorically.
"Apparently. Look, just don't ask questions, it doesn't make any sense, I know, but numbers going up shouldn't mean that we suddenly get stronger, so just go with it." I whispered in exasperation as we snuck through the outside of the town towards the shipyard close to a river.
Eventually, we found the cub in a cage that was way too small for the little creature, and of course they had him in a warehouse that was built over water instead of on the earth. The cage was made of wood in a wooden building, and the little guy looked like he had a broken limb.
Blank eyes looked up at me with a tremble, his front paw held closer towards his chest while he tried to retreat back into the back of his cage.
"Aw." Isabelle cooed at the creature, my own coo stifled by the rage I was feeling at wanting to burn this entire building to the ground.
I broke the lock off the cage, and gently reached out to grab the little guy. At first he tried scratching at me, but when my hands gently wrapped around his torso, he went stock still. As if afraid that fighting back in my grasp would only harm him further.
"Shh, there, there pequeno (little one), we're taking you to your mamma." Yes, I knew that he couldn't understand me, even if he did understand human language, but fuck you, I will baby talk cute animals as much as I damn well please. He was definitely bigger than one might expect, probably as large as I was tall, so maybe a newborn? I don't know, it wasn't like I was an expert in Badgermole physiology. Or any form of biology, really.
Maybe that was something that I would have to invest into in the future.
I grabbed a piece of uncooked steak from my Inventory and placed it close to the little guy's mouth, needing to lift my arm as high as it would go so that the piece would even reach him in the first place.
He gobbled up the piece in one gulp, little mouth full of sharp fangs that chewed and swallowed it fast enough that it made me doubt I gave him a piece in the first place.
The white fur on his face seemed to soften at that, and the tension I felt in his body seemed to dissipate away.
"Come on. Let's go." I told Isabelle, the French woman cooing at the Badgermole, gently patting the top of his head as I cast a cure on his arm and launched a Fireball at the building while I was at it.
"What about the ones that took the little one?" My friend asked.
I snorted. "If I could, I'd find the pricks and give them to the parents to do as they please. Thing is, finding them would be far more trouble than it would be worth, especially with the language barrier. Can't exactly find them if we can't ask any questions or understand what the hell any of the writing here means."
"A pity." She said, voice cold as ice, and eyes miniature glaciers that glanced dispassionately back at the burning flames as the shaking earth trembled in rage.
"Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing."
Mia passed the mewling scrambling creature towards the massive badger mother who was easily the size of a bus. Each claw on her four paws were easily as tall as Mia was, yet the young woman crooned up at the sniffing creature, one of her hands twitching to pet it before she decided against it, the realization seeming to pain the woman that was her only friend.
Truly, her life was stranger than she ever thought it could be, yet it was paradise compared to the existence that the last fifty-nine years had been.
The mother did not come alone, four other 'Badgermoles' accompanying the worried mother, each of them gently stomping their feet in waiting, heads eerily still as the empty brown eyes stared into space.
She mentioned that they were blind, but I didn't think that she had been serious. This world had been different from the one that she had been used to from the get go. Something in the air just felt… more.
As if the sun shone brighter in this world than hers ever could.
Mia giggled, and Isabelle shuddered as the mother dipped her enormous head and sniffed their heads, gently snuggling into each of them in… thanks.
No, this was an animal, there was no way that it could actually understand what they had done for her.
Mia smiled up at the creatures, ignoring the noises coming from the town behind them, most of them in panic, while there were some people bowing of all things.
"Fuck it." Her friend muttered out, and brushed one hand against the mother badgermoles head, the creature grunting in delight.
I want to do that too.
Unfortunately, before she could, shouts started to come from the town behind them and a group of men came rushing out. Three of them were wearing brown and green robes around themselves, most of them of notably better quality than most of the townsfolk that they had seen, and one of them wearing a red tunic and black pants, his long black hair done up into a ponytail that reached his back.
Mia turned around cracking her hands, a savage smile on her lips, and Isabelle's own hands twitched towards her guns when the sound of heavy boots somehow reached their ears, and everyone on the outskirts of town turned towards the noise.
Quiet prevailed as the sight of a tall woman, taller than any man Isabelle had ever seen, walked with a purpose towards them. Solid boots pounded the ground in a steady gait, her green robes fluttering in the wind as the fading light of sunset glinted off the golden fan-like headpiece she wore on top of her white painted head.
Sounds of surprise echoed from the crowd behind the two women, yet the sound that the former French soldier paid attention to was the wheezing gasp that came from Mia.
"Kiyoshi." Isabelle barely managed to catch, the badgermole family each brushing against Mia before turning towards Kiyoshi, the little cub yipping at Mia as it turned towards the family.
The woman's sharp brown eyes focused the group of two women near the Badgermoles, and Mia, unflappable, headbutted a vampire and stormed two ghoul guarded dens Mia, squeaked like a little school girl.
"Nah, fuck that." Mia said, waving at the family of badgermoles, putting her two fists together and bowing of all things, almost to her waist. She then pressed on the Y option on the blue screen congratulating the party of two for completing the quest, and the surrounding landscape disappeared, Bertha and George a few inches closer towards them, both of them jumping back a few feet.
George didn't know what he had been expecting when he'd followed the psychotic woman that reminded him of some of the more… enthusiastic people in his unit, but her disappearing and reappearing a few seconds after covered head to toe in dirt, with an old scroll in her hands shaking on the ground hadn't been one of them.
He'd just heard her torture and interrogate a Vampire that he knew could take far more of a beating than a normal human, and killed him with just a flash of light.
How, he didn't know, and part of him didn't want to ask.
The other part of him wanted to know everything that she knew about magic and see if he could start slinging around balls of holy light.
"Oh, so that's how it works. Alright then." She said as her eyes roved through the wooden scroll she held in her hands, a smile on her face that only made him shiver in fear.
"I still say that we should run." George whispered to his old commander, Bertha's frown twitching in the only form of worry that he had ever seen from her in their years of friendship.
"Noted. Yet, we both know that the only intel we have is what little we've learned from our Hunts. And those have cost us more than it should have." She responded back with the same tired voice that he knew he couldn't fight against.
No matter how much every bone in his body was telling him that he should be running for the hills against the crazy Latina woman and her French hottie.
If anything, that scar on her face only made her hotter in his eyes, but then again, women that could kick his ass were definitely his type. The Latina one though reeked of the type of crazy that he learned long ago to stay the fuck away from
Both of the strange women ignored him, Mia passing Isabelle the scroll as she popped her neck and observed the surroundings around them. That smile grew wider, and he almost reached for the grenades he kept in his coat, when she spread her feet apart in a fighting stance that… looked kinda familiar.
Her feet were wide apart, arms held towards her chest almost in a boxing stance with her hands balled up into fists.
She stomped her right foot, and he could feel the very ground underneath them shake with the force of the blow, and threw her arms out as if she were ripping a door open. The concrete in front of her moved, twin slabs of stone flipping over in perfect unison, revealing a perfectly square opening that led deeper into the earth.
Oh, wonderful, now she can just throw the fucking ground at me.
"What the hell are you planning on doing?" He found himself asking, the logical part of his brain screaming at him to shut the fuck up and stop talking to the crazy lady.
Suddenly, the grenades in his pockets didn't feel heavy enough of a death switch hanging around her.
"Renovating. Building something new up top is probably going to catch attention and nosy inspectors. But what about underground? Don't worry, hiding it isn't going to be a problem. Nothing a little more concrete or stone can't fix." She mumbled out, the doors leading outside banging open as she started to chuck piles of old earth and dirt into the night.
Even her friend just stared at her like she was crazy, which she was.
"Mia, dear, are you sure that you know what you are doing?"
"No, not really. Architecture is something that I sorta need a degree on. I think. No way that building an underground base is going to be simple."
Every lesson he had ever learned back in his demolition days forced him to speak up, even if he wanted to just stand there quietly and fade into the background.
"Listen, building underground isn't as simple as digging a hole. You need proper support structures to make sure that the entire place doesn't just collapse around you! Actual concrete or steel so that you don't just wake up in a grave!"
And suddenly, he distinctly disliked the gleam in her eyes as she turned towards him.
"You an architect?" She asked.
"Yes?" He managed to say instead of squeak.
Oh, how he wished he'd decided on a different day to meet with Bertha a few days ago.
Isabelle at least didn't look at me any different, unsurprising given that she probably had as much of a roaring fire in her heart as I did after… well everything.
Killing Faulkner, the asshole that had turned Regina into a shell of her former self didn't make me feel any better. But I already knew that it wasn't going to. Vengeance was never about making yourself feel better, not really. It was balancing the scales and allowing that bottled rage out into the world instead of inward. Though, in many circumstances, it was both.
But, at the very least, I knew that he couldn't hurt any more people, and there were countless others that he had killed before Regina had ever drunk his blood.
"What is a Mass Embrace?" George asked, keeping his voice steady, even if I knew that I probably scared the shit out of him after my little 'interrogation' downstairs.
"It's how some of the Sabbat keep their numbers up. Keep in mind, the Sabbat itself is pretty big, and there are plenty of people that don't like the practice. But… well, given how many of their lot have been dropping around like flies, both because of us, and because the Camarilla have been launching little strikes into their territory, they need to keep their numbers up. They're going to kidnap a bunch of people, turn them, and knock them out before they can frenzy so they can bury them. Any that manage to dig their way out will then be fed and 'initiated' into the organization. Though, most of them are going to be little more than disposable meatbags for the group to throw away when they need to." Regina hadn't been to one before, she hadn't been deemed 'worthy' enough to witness a 'holy' ritual, which was probably a good thing. She might have been fed to one of the Kindred that actually managed to make it out.
Bertha shivered in place, and George looked like he was going to be sick. "So, there's no limit to how many Vampires can be made?"
"The only limit is how much blood a Sire is willing to spare. And how much he needs to feed to fuel the act. And there are plenty of bodies in the city." The words were hollow and ashen in my mouth. A chilling fact that only plummeted the dark mood that had already hung over the room like a weighted cloak.
"Miami is infested with them, isn't it?" Bertha asked, the stubborn fire in her eye dimmer than I had ever seen it.
"Yes. As is every large city in the world. Any place filled with people, filled with blood, is going to attract them like the mosquitoes that they are." That reminded me, I was going to need to look through the Instant Quests to see if I could find that in there.
"What, there aren't any out in the countryside?" George asked, almost hysterically.
"Yeah, there are. That's where the Nosferatu like to hang out. The latter being… physically changed the most out of all the vampire clans. Let's just say that you'll know what one is after you see it. And that's also where the Werewolves tend to stick around." Poor guy let out a hysterical laugh that I was actually feeling right about now as I started to remember just how fucked this world was. How many horrors hid in the shadows and beyond. The web of a weaver choking destruction to the point its thrashing was corrupting and protruding existence.
Individually, most of the problems could be taken care of. I know of at least a few Gamers that could solo a bevy of this shit. The problem was the scale of everything.
Everything was shit, and trying to fix it was probably a futile task.
But, if futility was the end result, I might as well make sure that as many of those fuckers go down in flames with me.
"On the bright side, we can at least start helping here and there." I said with a cheer that I didn't really feel, but I learned how to fake it in the last Depression back home. Sometimes the only way to keep living is by convincing yourself that there was a reason to do it.
I prefer sheer spite, but hey, that wasn't enough for most people.
"And you think that you're enough to fight these things?" George asked, hysterics not quite quelled yet, and wanting to take out his anger on someone else.
"With enough time, sure. Maybe. But the problem isn't just killing them all, it's to keep the rest of them from coming in and taking over once the power vacuum takes residence. We get rid of the Sabbat here in Miami, and then the Camarilla are going to try and take over. They've been trying to send their little hit squads into the city for years, but haven't made much headway when the Sabbat outnumber them and have control of the city. It is much easier to defend your home than it is to attack someone else's after all."
Turning away from the group staring at me, demanding explanations that would help them sleep at night, I glance around the old warehouse that might have once been a bustle of industry. Old rusted equipment lay there, forgotten, dusty and brown with time and abandonment. The ceiling of the building was barely holding together too, various holes allowing the warm breeze to whistle down onto our heads.
It had been a curious anomaly that I noticed in this world. There were a lot more abandoned buildings just… out in the world. Instead of being torn down and changed to a parking lot, or a little space for a company to start reaching their claws into the city, plots of land and buildings were just left there to rot. Factories, shops, warehouses. Sure, you saw plenty of those back home during this time, but it just felt like there were more of these places just scattered around the world.
There were also a lot more stone and gothic buildings hanging around. A lot more churches with gargoyles too. Sometimes I'd forget that I'm in Miami and start thinking that this was Gotham city or something.
A reflection to just how rotted the world was? On multiple courses towards the end? Whether it be Gehenna, the Wyrm, or Ascension gone wrong?
"So, got any plans for this place?" I asked Bertha, the two friends whispering towards each other while sending glances towards me and Isabelle every now and then.
"Not really. I bought this place more to flip it eventually… but things didn't work out quite like how I thought it was going to."
"Buyer flaked basically." I said offhandedly, staring at the vast building that I couldn't help but start to customize in my head. Construction had been one of those little skills that I had to learn after the second time my house blew up.
Wait, was there a construction skill somewhere? Not like I was scraping for points.
"How's about we make a deal then?" I asked with a smile on my face, knowing that there was no way that she was going to say no.
Bertha and George glanced at each other again. "Didn't you promise that you were going to teach us some things first?"
"Of course, we can do that either tonight, tomorrow in the morning if you would prefer. But this deal will only help you, trust me." Wait… couldn't I use that for building out something underground? "After all, we're going to need a place for us to meet up, and I can't exactly teach you magic or how to use a rune properly in the middle of a Denny's."
I ignore Bertha mouthing 'Denny's' at George, who himself looks confused, starting to try and imagine just what we were going to need. The electrical work was going to be a pain in the ass, though maybe a power source wouldn't be too hard.
Oh good, that Engineering skill was helping build stuff underground, that was good to know. I was always shit at math back home.
Maybe I could look up some textbooks on architecture and other skills. My driving was already a lot better than it had been in life, I felt like I could probably do some action movie stuff with one already.
"You seriously want to use this place? For what? It's a giant junkpile." George said with a grunt of disgust as he glanced around at the darkened building, the only illuminating light the lamp that Bertha had brought with her from her car.
"Sure, but I promise you, that I can whip this place into something much better in just a week. Won't be perfect, but I kinda need a secure place for some of my more… experimental projects." Runesmithing wasn't exactly something that one could do with just an anvil and some heat. Well, maybe you could, but doing it that was a surefire way to be visited by black suits.
And unlike the Dwarfs, I wasn't afraid to experiment with creating new Runes. If I had it right, then the true sources of power for the Runes were the magic that they captured, and the actual engraving itself was more like a blueprint for how it should react, along with the proper chants and materials.
I had a number of Runes that I already knew how to make. Probably not very well at first, but we'd get there eventually. Besides… my magic wasn't like the Winds of Magic. It was cheating at what the proper rules should be, and that was just fine with me.
"Fine. You can do whatever you want, just as long as you manage to keep anyone from finding out. The moment that the cops or someone else finds you though, I'm going to pretend you're just some crazy lady that's been squatting here." Bertha said with the faintest trace of amusement in her eyes, tempered just a little hotter at what might be fear.
Of me?
Well… I couldn't blame her for that. Not after I just tortured Faulkner downstairs for information.
I brought up the menu, typing in what I was looking for, and smiled at what I found.
And it was such a simple quest too.
Without waiting for a word from any of them, I walk towards Isabelle and grab her hand, the French woman giving me a suspicious raised eyebrow that freezes when she sees the menu in front of me. "We'll be right back!" I promised both of my little trainees, pressing down the Y button just as Isabelle opened her mouth to protest.
The warehouse was gone, replaced with craggy mountains and trees as far as the eyes could see.
"What have you dragged us into?" Isabelle asked, giving me a very unhappy glare, which I ignored.
"Just a little quest that we can get done in a few hours, not a big deal."
"For what, pray tell, have you taken us to another world for if it is so trivial?" There was ice in her voice again, but I was too busy reading through the latest communication from the system.
SAVE THE BADGER MOLE CUB TAKEN BY POACHERS
SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, A BAND OF IDIOTS MANAGED TO TAKE A BADGERMOLE CUB WITH THEM TO SELL TOWARDS AN INTERESTED BENEFACTOR. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS.
AN EARTHQUAKE THE SIZE OF TEXAS IS HEADING TOWARDS THE NEAREST TOWN THAT'S GOING TO MAKE THE ONES THAT HIT JAPAN LOOK LIKE A FART IN THE WIND.
FIND THE CUB AND RETURN IT BACK TO ITS PROPER MOUNTAIN HOME AND YOU WILL BE AWARDED WITH TEACHINGS FROM A BUNCH OF BLIND GIANT RODENTS THAT COULD TURN EVERY TOWN NEARBY INTO AN UNDERGROUND MUSEUM IN A COUPLE OF HUNDRED YEARS.
REWARD? 10,000XP
5000 GP
EARTHBENDING SCROLL
SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, A BAND OF IDIOTS MANAGED TO TAKE A BADGERMOLE CUB WITH THEM TO SELL TOWARDS AN INTERESTED BENEFACTOR. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS.
AN EARTHQUAKE THE SIZE OF TEXAS IS HEADING TOWARDS THE NEAREST TOWN THAT'S GOING TO MAKE THE ONES THAT HIT JAPAN LOOK LIKE A FART IN THE WIND.
FIND THE CUB AND RETURN IT BACK TO ITS PROPER MOUNTAIN HOME AND YOU WILL BE AWARDED WITH TEACHINGS FROM A BUNCH OF BLIND GIANT RODENTS THAT COULD TURN EVERY TOWN NEARBY INTO AN UNDERGROUND MUSEUM IN A COUPLE OF HUNDRED YEARS.
REWARD? 10,000XP
5000 GP
EARTHBENDING SCROLL
Well, that was a lot more pressing than I thought it was going to be.
"Something that is going to help make sure that we don't get swatted when someone comes looking for our base. We need a place to hide, after all." The list of crap that I needed to get just to make sure we don't die when we really start making waves was getting longer and longer by the day.
Honestly, finding the trail that the men took out of the caves wasn't that hard thanks to Investigation. Talk about a cheat skill that basically helped me deduce most things. I wasn't quite Sherlock Holmes, but maybe give me a few years, and I'd get to that level on my own.
And I swear, even without the skill being a high level, it felt like my brain was making more and more connections than it should, far faster than a normal brain could process. Maybe a side effect of my higher stats?
Regardless, a couple of Hastes on the both of us had us arriving at the nearest town within just a few minutes, and from there the trail became a hell of a lot harder to follow thanks to the dozens of other tracks mingled on top of theirs.
That was where things became… trickier.
Couldn't exactly just waltz into town without catching some attention, both because of our clothes, and because we obviously weren't from around here. The language barrier was another little problem, but that's what Sneak was for. Albeit, Isabelle was the one better at skulduggery than I was.
It was an Earth kingdom village alright, if the green clothing, stone buildings and the guards moving the stone doorway using their fists was any indication.
"What the hell is that?" Isabelle asked with a thick accent in surprise.
"Earthbending. Some of the people in this world are capable of bending one of the four classical elements. Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. The only person in this world that can bend more, as in all of them, is someone that is reincarnated in a cycle. Don't know who it is right now, but most likely it's the last Airbender that managed to avoid the purge of his culture and is currently frozen in a giant ball of ice in the ocean." My words are clinical and unfeeling, but I can feel the burn in my heart at thinking about that poor kid and what he is going to go through in the coming years. Finding him isn't something that I can exactly do, he might be somewhere in the South Pole right now, or he might be a glacier just flowing around somewhere underwater. Who knew.
And going conqueror was only going to end badly for me anyway.
"And a scroll of all things is supposed to teach you how to be an Earthbender?" She asked rhetorically.
"Apparently. Look, just don't ask questions, it doesn't make any sense, I know, but numbers going up shouldn't mean that we suddenly get stronger, so just go with it." I whispered in exasperation as we snuck through the outside of the town towards the shipyard close to a river.
Eventually, we found the cub in a cage that was way too small for the little creature, and of course they had him in a warehouse that was built over water instead of on the earth. The cage was made of wood in a wooden building, and the little guy looked like he had a broken limb.
Blank eyes looked up at me with a tremble, his front paw held closer towards his chest while he tried to retreat back into the back of his cage.
"Aw." Isabelle cooed at the creature, my own coo stifled by the rage I was feeling at wanting to burn this entire building to the ground.
I broke the lock off the cage, and gently reached out to grab the little guy. At first he tried scratching at me, but when my hands gently wrapped around his torso, he went stock still. As if afraid that fighting back in my grasp would only harm him further.
"Shh, there, there pequeno (little one), we're taking you to your mamma." Yes, I knew that he couldn't understand me, even if he did understand human language, but fuck you, I will baby talk cute animals as much as I damn well please. He was definitely bigger than one might expect, probably as large as I was tall, so maybe a newborn? I don't know, it wasn't like I was an expert in Badgermole physiology. Or any form of biology, really.
Maybe that was something that I would have to invest into in the future.
I grabbed a piece of uncooked steak from my Inventory and placed it close to the little guy's mouth, needing to lift my arm as high as it would go so that the piece would even reach him in the first place.
He gobbled up the piece in one gulp, little mouth full of sharp fangs that chewed and swallowed it fast enough that it made me doubt I gave him a piece in the first place.
The white fur on his face seemed to soften at that, and the tension I felt in his body seemed to dissipate away.
"Come on. Let's go." I told Isabelle, the French woman cooing at the Badgermole, gently patting the top of his head as I cast a cure on his arm and launched a Fireball at the building while I was at it.
"What about the ones that took the little one?" My friend asked.
I snorted. "If I could, I'd find the pricks and give them to the parents to do as they please. Thing is, finding them would be far more trouble than it would be worth, especially with the language barrier. Can't exactly find them if we can't ask any questions or understand what the hell any of the writing here means."
"A pity." She said, voice cold as ice, and eyes miniature glaciers that glanced dispassionately back at the burning flames as the shaking earth trembled in rage.
"Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing."
Mia passed the mewling scrambling creature towards the massive badger mother who was easily the size of a bus. Each claw on her four paws were easily as tall as Mia was, yet the young woman crooned up at the sniffing creature, one of her hands twitching to pet it before she decided against it, the realization seeming to pain the woman that was her only friend.
Truly, her life was stranger than she ever thought it could be, yet it was paradise compared to the existence that the last fifty-nine years had been.
The mother did not come alone, four other 'Badgermoles' accompanying the worried mother, each of them gently stomping their feet in waiting, heads eerily still as the empty brown eyes stared into space.
She mentioned that they were blind, but I didn't think that she had been serious. This world had been different from the one that she had been used to from the get go. Something in the air just felt… more.
As if the sun shone brighter in this world than hers ever could.
Mia giggled, and Isabelle shuddered as the mother dipped her enormous head and sniffed their heads, gently snuggling into each of them in… thanks.
No, this was an animal, there was no way that it could actually understand what they had done for her.
Mia smiled up at the creatures, ignoring the noises coming from the town behind them, most of them in panic, while there were some people bowing of all things.
"Fuck it." Her friend muttered out, and brushed one hand against the mother badgermoles head, the creature grunting in delight.
I want to do that too.
Unfortunately, before she could, shouts started to come from the town behind them and a group of men came rushing out. Three of them were wearing brown and green robes around themselves, most of them of notably better quality than most of the townsfolk that they had seen, and one of them wearing a red tunic and black pants, his long black hair done up into a ponytail that reached his back.
Mia turned around cracking her hands, a savage smile on her lips, and Isabelle's own hands twitched towards her guns when the sound of heavy boots somehow reached their ears, and everyone on the outskirts of town turned towards the noise.
Quiet prevailed as the sight of a tall woman, taller than any man Isabelle had ever seen, walked with a purpose towards them. Solid boots pounded the ground in a steady gait, her green robes fluttering in the wind as the fading light of sunset glinted off the golden fan-like headpiece she wore on top of her white painted head.
Sounds of surprise echoed from the crowd behind the two women, yet the sound that the former French soldier paid attention to was the wheezing gasp that came from Mia.
"Kiyoshi." Isabelle barely managed to catch, the badgermole family each brushing against Mia before turning towards Kiyoshi, the little cub yipping at Mia as it turned towards the family.
The woman's sharp brown eyes focused the group of two women near the Badgermoles, and Mia, unflappable, headbutted a vampire and stormed two ghoul guarded dens Mia, squeaked like a little school girl.
"Nah, fuck that." Mia said, waving at the family of badgermoles, putting her two fists together and bowing of all things, almost to her waist. She then pressed on the Y option on the blue screen congratulating the party of two for completing the quest, and the surrounding landscape disappeared, Bertha and George a few inches closer towards them, both of them jumping back a few feet.
George didn't know what he had been expecting when he'd followed the psychotic woman that reminded him of some of the more… enthusiastic people in his unit, but her disappearing and reappearing a few seconds after covered head to toe in dirt, with an old scroll in her hands shaking on the ground hadn't been one of them.
He'd just heard her torture and interrogate a Vampire that he knew could take far more of a beating than a normal human, and killed him with just a flash of light.
How, he didn't know, and part of him didn't want to ask.
The other part of him wanted to know everything that she knew about magic and see if he could start slinging around balls of holy light.
"Oh, so that's how it works. Alright then." She said as her eyes roved through the wooden scroll she held in her hands, a smile on her face that only made him shiver in fear.
"I still say that we should run." George whispered to his old commander, Bertha's frown twitching in the only form of worry that he had ever seen from her in their years of friendship.
"Noted. Yet, we both know that the only intel we have is what little we've learned from our Hunts. And those have cost us more than it should have." She responded back with the same tired voice that he knew he couldn't fight against.
No matter how much every bone in his body was telling him that he should be running for the hills against the crazy Latina woman and her French hottie.
If anything, that scar on her face only made her hotter in his eyes, but then again, women that could kick his ass were definitely his type. The Latina one though reeked of the type of crazy that he learned long ago to stay the fuck away from
Both of the strange women ignored him, Mia passing Isabelle the scroll as she popped her neck and observed the surroundings around them. That smile grew wider, and he almost reached for the grenades he kept in his coat, when she spread her feet apart in a fighting stance that… looked kinda familiar.
Her feet were wide apart, arms held towards her chest almost in a boxing stance with her hands balled up into fists.
She stomped her right foot, and he could feel the very ground underneath them shake with the force of the blow, and threw her arms out as if she were ripping a door open. The concrete in front of her moved, twin slabs of stone flipping over in perfect unison, revealing a perfectly square opening that led deeper into the earth.
Oh, wonderful, now she can just throw the fucking ground at me.
"What the hell are you planning on doing?" He found himself asking, the logical part of his brain screaming at him to shut the fuck up and stop talking to the crazy lady.
Suddenly, the grenades in his pockets didn't feel heavy enough of a death switch hanging around her.
"Renovating. Building something new up top is probably going to catch attention and nosy inspectors. But what about underground? Don't worry, hiding it isn't going to be a problem. Nothing a little more concrete or stone can't fix." She mumbled out, the doors leading outside banging open as she started to chuck piles of old earth and dirt into the night.
Even her friend just stared at her like she was crazy, which she was.
"Mia, dear, are you sure that you know what you are doing?"
"No, not really. Architecture is something that I sorta need a degree on. I think. No way that building an underground base is going to be simple."
Every lesson he had ever learned back in his demolition days forced him to speak up, even if he wanted to just stand there quietly and fade into the background.
"Listen, building underground isn't as simple as digging a hole. You need proper support structures to make sure that the entire place doesn't just collapse around you! Actual concrete or steel so that you don't just wake up in a grave!"
And suddenly, he distinctly disliked the gleam in her eyes as she turned towards him.
"You an architect?" She asked.
"Yes?" He managed to say instead of squeak.
Oh, how he wished he'd decided on a different day to meet with Bertha a few days ago.
NAME: MIA ITZEL/REGINA REED AGE:93(68+23)
LV:20
HP:3150/3150HP MP:1000/1000
ATTRIBUTE POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE:
FUNDS:$4000
GP:176,562GP
PERK POINTS:
STR:45
DEX:45
AGI:43
VIT:45
INT:43
WIS:40
Skills:
Guns:14
Driving:8
Melee Weapons:8
Investigation:30
Ansastuken:25
Acrobatics:16
Finances:2
First Aid:2
Sneak:20
Ki Manipulation: 9
Mana Manipulation:10
Eearthbending: 5
Architecture:2
Crafting Abilities:
Dwarfen Runecraft:8
Engineering:10
Digistruct Specialization:4
Spells:
Libra:10
Telekinesis:12
Fireball:20
Cure:20
Esuna:25
Haste:18
Scry:4
Mind Blank:13
FF12 Elemental Spells: 10
PERKS:
FORCEFUL MIND:
APPLY YOUR STRENGTH ATTRIBUTE TO KINETIC MAGIC AND ABILITIES DAMAGE MULTIPLIER.
THOUGHTFUL MIND: INCREASE MP REGENERATION BY 50%
HARDY LUNGS: INCREASE OVERALL ENDURANCE AND STAMINA.
DAY HUNTER:YOU DEAL INCREASED DAMAGE TO VAMPIRES DURING THE DAYTIME.
ARSONIST:YOU GAIN AN INCREASED EXPERIENCE GAIN FOR FIRE BASED ABILITIES
I CAN DO THIS ALL DAY: REGENERATE YOUR HP BY 5% PER HOUR INSTEAD OF 1%.
REINFORCED IMMUNE SYSTEM:YOUR POISON RESISTANCE IS INCREASED BY 12%. YOUR DISEASE RESISTANCE INCREASED BY 20%
HARDY BODY: DOUBLE HP GAINS THROUGH VITALITY STAT.
PIERCING BLOWS: UNARMORED ATTACKS IGNORE 5% OF ARMOR OR DEFENSE.
AKASHIC RYTHM: STRENGTH AND DEXTERITY INCREASE BY 10% WHEN PERFORMING A COMBINATION OF PHYSICAL BLOWS.
POISON RESISTANCE: GAIN 25% RESISTANCE TO POISON AND POISON DAMAGE
MIND AND BODY: SPELLS THAT BUFF YOUR PHYSICAL ABILITIES DO THE SAME TO YOUR MENTAL ABILITIES. YES, THIS DOES STACK. WHOOPEE FOR YOU.
MAXIMIZE HP: INCREASE HP BY 200%
ACROBATIC FIGHTER: APPLY ACROBATIC PROFICIENCY TO DAMAGE DONE BY PHYSICAL BLOWS OR ABILITIES.
LV:20
HP:3150/3150HP MP:1000/1000
ATTRIBUTE POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE:
FUNDS:$4000
GP:176,562GP
PERK POINTS:
STR:45
DEX:45
AGI:43
VIT:45
INT:43
WIS:40
Skills:
Guns:14
Driving:8
Melee Weapons:8
Investigation:30
Ansastuken:25
Acrobatics:16
Finances:2
First Aid:2
Sneak:20
Ki Manipulation: 9
Mana Manipulation:10
Eearthbending: 5
Architecture:2
Crafting Abilities:
Dwarfen Runecraft:8
Engineering:10
Digistruct Specialization:4
Spells:
Libra:10
Telekinesis:12
Fireball:20
Cure:20
Esuna:25
Haste:18
Scry:4
Mind Blank:13
FF12 Elemental Spells: 10
PERKS:
FORCEFUL MIND:
APPLY YOUR STRENGTH ATTRIBUTE TO KINETIC MAGIC AND ABILITIES DAMAGE MULTIPLIER.
THOUGHTFUL MIND: INCREASE MP REGENERATION BY 50%
HARDY LUNGS: INCREASE OVERALL ENDURANCE AND STAMINA.
DAY HUNTER:YOU DEAL INCREASED DAMAGE TO VAMPIRES DURING THE DAYTIME.
ARSONIST:YOU GAIN AN INCREASED EXPERIENCE GAIN FOR FIRE BASED ABILITIES
I CAN DO THIS ALL DAY: REGENERATE YOUR HP BY 5% PER HOUR INSTEAD OF 1%.
REINFORCED IMMUNE SYSTEM:YOUR POISON RESISTANCE IS INCREASED BY 12%. YOUR DISEASE RESISTANCE INCREASED BY 20%
HARDY BODY: DOUBLE HP GAINS THROUGH VITALITY STAT.
PIERCING BLOWS: UNARMORED ATTACKS IGNORE 5% OF ARMOR OR DEFENSE.
AKASHIC RYTHM: STRENGTH AND DEXTERITY INCREASE BY 10% WHEN PERFORMING A COMBINATION OF PHYSICAL BLOWS.
POISON RESISTANCE: GAIN 25% RESISTANCE TO POISON AND POISON DAMAGE
MIND AND BODY: SPELLS THAT BUFF YOUR PHYSICAL ABILITIES DO THE SAME TO YOUR MENTAL ABILITIES. YES, THIS DOES STACK. WHOOPEE FOR YOU.
MAXIMIZE HP: INCREASE HP BY 200%
ACROBATIC FIGHTER: APPLY ACROBATIC PROFICIENCY TO DAMAGE DONE BY PHYSICAL BLOWS OR ABILITIES.
Apologies for being gone for a little while, life has been more hectic lately and Persona 3 Reload has consumed a lot of my free time.
So, no need to worry about any more Instant Quests for a little while, or if it does happen it's going to be offscreen.
Though, I am going to be taking a small break from this story for a little while to focus on some of my other writing projects. They need some love too.
So, no need to worry about any more Instant Quests for a little while, or if it does happen it's going to be offscreen.
Though, I am going to be taking a small break from this story for a little while to focus on some of my other writing projects. They need some love too.
Last edited:
- Location
- England
Suddenly it's a Tunnel Lady crossover.