There were 11 of us. That was more than enough to take out whatever was in that building. On second that, hopefully that should be enough to take out whatever was in that building. We couldn’t exactly get anyone in there undetected. Or could we? Joe, Nora, and Jackson could move stealthily enough; 2 had the skill, and Nora had her camouflage ability. That was an option. I wonder if the twins had stealth? It didn’t matter, as I wasn’t putting them directly in danger like that. I turned to Jackson, “can you take Nora here and do a little recon, close enough to get an idea of what is going on over there, but not so close as to get yourselves in trouble?”
“Son, I don’t need the girl going with me. She would slow me down.” He definitely looked unconvinced. I would’ve agreed with him before her new ability. The more she uses this ability, the more likely she also picks up stealth as a skill; in very short order and ability will lead to a skill. A small part of me was geeking out over that concept.
“I get what you’re saying. But her new camo ability sounds powerful enough to ensure she isn’t completely out of her depth. Besides, I don’t like the idea of sending anybody by themselves with all the nastiness out in the world right now.”
After a moment of hesitation Jackson nodded and turned to Nora. “Young lady you’re with me.” He immediately made his way off towards the Stack Shack with Nora in tow. Time to start my internal checklist. Recon: check.
Now my mind grappled with some logistics. My eyes scanned the group with me behind the wall of vehicles. They settled on Sergeant Stanton. “Do you enough spare radios to get a set up to the roof?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll have my guys recover what we can from our dead. We’ll set everything to the same channel.”
“Excellent. Lets do that real quick so we can make sure everyone is in communication.” Communication: check.
“Does anyone know the general layout of the Stack Shack?” I directed this to the cops and highway patrolmen.
One of the officers stepped forward, “I know what the front area looks like really well. I’m there every week.”
“Awesome. We’ll get you paper and pencil so you can at least sketch what you know.” Map: partial check.
I took a moment to think while radios got distributed and partial map got drawn. We needed to use the all the abilities at our disposal. I was stuck, because I wanted Joe down with us, but his spot as overwatch was literally saving lives. I could put both the twins up there, but a bow doesn’t exactly have the same range as a rifle. On top of that, they didn’t exactly have a lot of practice with their pistols. Crap! That sort of determines that Joe stays put. I’ll keep Brittney down here near us until we head over. I wasn’t putting her in danger when she had used up the last of her mana on the wolf.
That reminded me. It’s been almost an hour since I used mana. Maybe I can figure out how fast we get it back. I closed my eyes an checked my status.
Mana: 1/9
Then there was a notification I hadn’t noticed before.
New Skill acquired: Command
I wanted to be happy about acquiring a new skill. The system recognized me taking charge enough that I gained a skill to reflect that. That was completely overshadowed by the fact that we seem to gain back one mana point an hour. It would take 9 hours to completely refill. This is the crappiest magic system ever. Who would create a magic system that didn’t really let you magic? Or was there something I was missing? So far, our strongest benefits were the multiple uses a day of our class abilities, and that was only for those of us that had actual class abilities. Billy had a passive ability that was a bit of a waste. Nora just gained the camouflage ability, so she could at least be a little sneaky. I could essentially identify the kind of monster the monster was. Joe had a cool ability at least. He could become really effective against one monster at a time. Combine that with his new enchant ammo ability and he was probably the best off. Then there was Frank. His shield taunt ability saved all of us, and he gained another ability as well. Given all of that, Billy was smart to sit out until we got him an ability he could use. His mana was literally a waste until then.
The other abilities at our disposal were the highway patrol’s slowing ability combined with police’s lawbreakers mark. I forgot to ask Sergeant Jackson about his. God damn it! When am I going to remember to get that ability info before I send them into danger? Oh well, just going to have to get it when he gets back. That reminded me of the other essential piece to our ability puzzle. I glanced at Dennis, who was sitting down on the ground playing solitaire. Where did he pull a deck of cards from? Never mind. I looked about for Brittney. She was someone else who had drained all their mana. “Hey, Brittney. Can you come over here for a second?”
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The young teen girl looked at me with something that looked like caution before she walked up to me. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“I am sure you have noticed that mana hasn’t come back quickly at all. Do you happen to have any thoughts on that?”
“I’ve gotten my first mana point in just over 40 minutes. I put my health and mana numbers up in the upper left hand corner of my vision. I found a spot where you can do that. Oh yeah, and I also have this strange skill called mana recovery. I read the description and at Tier 1 it shrinks mana recover from 1 an hour to 3 every 2 hours. The description says it has something to do with meditation.”
Fuck! Why is it that at every turn, we find out some other critical piece of information that would save lives; a manual to all of this would have sped up our learning. We know so little about the system. If this child, err teenager, hadn’t randomly mentioned mana recovery, I wouldn’t know there was a skill that could boost the rate we get back mana. We need an entire notebook dedicated to skills. Fuck me! We know so little about our newly integrated world. I couldn’t let them see me freak out in circular anxiety induced thoughts though. “Brittney. I know I have Nora and Billy taking charge of classes and their abilities. Maybe you would like to document all the skills and non-class specific abilities. Both seem to become available based on affinities. I’m sure it would help everyone. In between, seriously work on that mana recovery skill. I need to know how everyone and I mean everyone learns it.”
A small sheepish grin spread across her lips. “I’m totally turning this into an earnable patch.” She really likes earning patches, pins, and similar things.
I immediately went into my status and played around with settings until I too had my health and mana displayed in the upper left hand corner of my vision. It really makes me think this really is all just some stupid fucking simulation. There was a plus side; gain greater understanding of the system and delegate additional documentation: check.
I started looking over the rough the officer drew on a sheet of paper. It looked like any 50’s inspired diner would look from the front. There were booths along the front and side windows facing the street. The main entrance was at the front corner of the building facing the intersection. There was originally a row of four person capacity tables between the booths and front counter. All this was standard fare. The front counter seemed no different in the diagram. It all screamed loudly that it was a 50’s diner with stacks of pancakes as some sort of extra theme or flair. The Tables and chairs were crammed into the booths. We could see that part from here. I’d say they were put there by 6 and a half foot tall angry toddlers, given the potential presence of abyssal orcs, that may not be far off. The furniture removed from the floors cleared out the obstructions from the front area. We just needed to fill in the map with the kitchen section.
Right as I finished that thought Jackson and Nora came back into view. Nora was smiling, and Jackson decidedly was not. Nora stepped up to me, “Hi Neal. The scouting was fun. We made it around the back and were able to get into the back door. It was locked, but Jackson there, picked the lock. It was all super fun!” Nora was fucking with me. She said the whole thing far too perky for no reason. The look on Jackson’s face told me he did not enjoy himself at all. It wasn’t serious face, but grumpy cat in human green beret form.
“Sgt. Jackson, you look like you have some sort of concerns from your recon. Lay it on me.”
“I have so many fucking concerns. First though I will let you know that I can get a team in through the back door. There are three of those dog guys in the front area combined with the one of the big guys. The big guy takes up enough space that it will make the front assault challenging. I’d suggest the young man there with the shield be the first in, and that he engage and tie up the big guy. That should free up the rest of the breaching team to take out the shorter dog headed fuckers.”
The back part should be led by me. There is another big guy in the back, guarding an older hunched over dog guy. Nora saw them, I couldn’t get close enough. She saw some sort of symbol carved into something covering the kitchen floor.”
“That sounds pretty straight forward. Where are all these, as you put it delicately, ‘fucking concerns’?”
“Magic. Fucking Magic! For Christ’s sake, I needed a magic knife to kill the two separate scouts we encountered. I didn’t have that, so slitting their throats was the messiest fucking thing I’ve ever had to do. The only reason I was able to take the first Fucking wolf man out was by out weighing him by well over double. The second one I had to straight up stab him first through the windpipe and then repeatedly stab his eye sockets while keeping his stupid fucking wolf mouth shut.” He was so angry his face was turning red.
“Also, Fucking Magic again! He camo ability was good enough that I lost track of her twice from less than fifteen fucking feet. How the FUCK do we counter that when the enemy has it?”
I felt a bit attacked, but I fully understood his perspective. The whole concept of our situation is thoroughly fucked. “It all fell in place, didn’t it?” I then looked right at him, to try and impart the level of fucked our planet has reached, despite portals not opening up yet in our time zone.
He looked back at me straight in the eyes, a thousand yard stare from 10 feet away. “Fuck.” Nora straight up cackled at the single word of omission.
“Nora, it’s not funny. I think the sgt. sees it like how you and I do; for a person with his combat, tactical, and strategic background I imagine the internal revelations are even worse.” Sgt. Jackson simply nodded in agreement.
Nora began filling in the map. She had finished the cackling. She clearly got all the humor and laughs she wanted out of the situation. I Iooked over the group of people we had. I put Frank on the front breachers. I decided that they needed 2 highway patrolman, and 2 police officers in that group. The synergies with the slowing, marking, and shield taunt meant they could hopefully clear the 4 up front quickly. The back sounded like it had a potential spell caster and his bodyguard. There is also the possibility of anyone we didn’t see. That is why I wanted to be back there helping Sgt. Jackson, Nora, along with an officer and highway patrolman. Joe and Brett were back on our McDonalds to provide any overwatch as necessary. It may not be the best plan, but slowing, marking, and shooting sounds like a good way to clear things out.
