NOVEL NEXT Chapter 37: Take a Fall
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Harry: Life is a stage! And I slept through every rehearsal and left my lines at home.
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Tuesday, November 12th, 2090, about 5:20 pm MST, Montana City
Harry, Claire, and Marie's avatar trooped up about twenty minutes later. "Took you long enough," chided Gordon playfully. They'd had to go through the new player market, the Sun Market, on foot. That was about half a mile of densely packed NPCs and players, vendors, and set pieces.
All told, twenty minutes wasn't very long.
Harry looked mournful as he eyed the scraps of their lunch. "I haven't eaten in days," he moaned. "Weeks."
"Minutes," Claire supplied at Gordon's questioning glance. "Speaking of which - Karen, how's your sugar?"
Karen, whose hypoglycemia tended to kick in at the worst possible time, gave a thumbs up. "Ate my stuff this time. I'm ready to kick names and take ass."
"And I'm all out of ass," volunteered Harry.
Nobody laughed.
The Promenade was much different from the town square Gordon had visited last time. For one thing, there was no traffic. The medieval-style town square had at least some vaguely defined pedestrian paths, but the Promenade had a constant stream of people moving through it. Most of them were clerics or cleric-adjacent, wearing bright saffron robes, their heads either shaven or adorned with long beards and staves.
The party felt like an eyesore to Gordon as the five took their place in the midst of the broad street. There was still no sign of Gordan's supposed dueling partner. He only had until noon.
"Hopefully, he gets to move on," Harry observed.
"Why?" asked Gordon. "Are you that invested in him dying twice?"
"It's not that," Harry replied. "I've already been chatting with our fans online in the stream chat. They know what we're up to today. I like to keep things from disappointing them."
Gordon listened while absently adjusting the pistols in his holsters, the motion smooth and familiar.
He had no idea, all those years ago, when he first started carrying a gun in real life, that it would have this effect on him. That he would become a gunslinger, a duelist—but he wasn't disappointed. It was fun.
He hoped his conversation with Karen had done some good. She had seemed subdued since their talk with Marie yesterday.
Karen had been one of the foremost forces for good in his life. Ever since his father remarried, and then, later, after his mother's death, she had been there. He didn't remember the exact ages, but in early elementary school, Claire had apparently been a frequent target for bullying. Karen, also blonde, had stepped up to defend her. What being blonde had to do with it, he never quite understood.
They had been like sisters, inseparable. And when Karen started becoming a regular fixture around their house, Gordon had come to respect her practical approach to life. He admired the effort she put into her hobbies, so similar to his own.
Then she had gone off to college. Six years passed. They'd been in vague touch, but he'd missed her. Somewhere in all that, they had stopped talking the same way. Once upon a time, they had stayed up hours later than they should, talking about anything under the sun. A constant stream of chatter between their two houses. They played cooperative games together, pulled pranks on Claire, dragging the protesting girl outside in all kinds of weather to make sure she joined their fitness routines—running through rain, snow, and the chill of night.
He had taught Karen how to drive stick. She had taught him how to braid hair.
He hoped she was okay.
Gordon shook the ghost of yesteryear's memories out of his head. Introspection was all well and good, but not before a fight. And definitely not while he was live-streaming.
> MrGreening12: You're looking a bit preoccupied
"Thanks, MrGreening12," Gordon replied. "But don't worry, I'm fine. We've just got a lot on our plate, and I'm anxious to get started."
Marie's avatar drifted closer to him, her latte skin and warm brown eyes focused on him. Whatever else anybody might say about Marie's contribution to the party, Gordon enjoyed her presence. The witch leaned in close and whispered to him, the only way she ever spoke to him directly: "I heard you say you were feeling anxious. "I wanted to remind you—I'm just a call away. And someday… I'll be even closer."
The recorded dialog faltered slightly, Marie's rich voice coming from the AI in nothing like the normal cadence of an AI speaker. "If you ever need a hug, you can ask for one. I did manage that much."
And this was why he hadn't looked under the hood of the avatar's AI, so to speak. He wanted to—a bit. Having a spellcaster on the team to supplement Claire would be much more useful if the spellcaster were coded well. But he didn't want to ruin any of the little surprises Marie might have included. And there had apparently been a few.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
It didn't feel like the right time for a hug, though. He looked up at the approximate location of the virtual camera, which was always following him—the data construct being invisible, but usually at a 'follow camera' angle to him. "Thank you, Marie," he said.
It didn't feel like enough. He'd always felt a bit short on words with Marie—caught between the heaviness of the words she didn't want to use while they were worlds apart and the shallowness of the more casual vocabulary she was comfortable using. 'Like', not 'love'. 'Together', not 'dating'. This would have been a great opportunity for "I love you too, Marie," but … no.
Harry stepped up next to him, his shadow falling directly down from his ridiculous affected beard and making him look monstrously fat. "Maybe I was wrong," he admitted. "It worked last time—I figured they'd show."
Claire's voice floated over to them from where she'd formed her own splinter group with Karen: "No future as an event planner, Harry? I'm shocked."
The promenade remained stubbornly empty of six-shooter-bearing bad guys.
"I guess that's that," said Gordon. The game clock, which he never used—among other interfaces—read 12:03 when pulled up briefly. The chat went nuts.
> MrGreening12: Buy a clock!
> Randoon_the_Wizard: No menus! PURISM
> Randoon_the_Wizard: BETRAYAL
"Okay, okay, my bad," admitted Gordon.
A procession began to make its way down the promenade, six horses wide, each with braided black-and-white checkered manes and plumed riders. Some sort of noble, perhaps. Gordon and the others wordlessly retreated to the pedestrian lanes. "I guess we move on, then?" suggested Gordon.
"I suppose so. Labyrinth?"
"Sounds like a plan. And—for the verisimilitude—we're taking a coach."
Claire rolled her eyes. "Yes."
A robed priest stumbled into the wizard, knocking Claire headlong into Harry, who caught her with one massive plate-sized hand. "Woah there, friend—" began Harry.
Everything happened at once. The priest's fingers made a rolling gesture, there was the squeak of hinges, and a small revolver placed itself into waiting fingers, upon which the gun went off.
Gordon, jumping sideways, felt his acrobat's trait engage—the world slowing to one third speed—and saw the second burst of flame and smoke leave the pistol, aim shifting to attempt to follow his movement. He drew a single gun. In this slowed time, there was no real need for two. His draw, lightning fast in real-time, was a quicksilver blur now. The trigger depressed—bang—and without releasing it he ran his left hand over the hammer, his specially created haptic glove's ridges catching on the prop's hammer's own once, twice, five times. A six-shot fan.
He'd live-streamed the construction process to avoid accusations of script usage, and it had been worth it for situations like this.
Six shots, all center mass, drove into the would-be assassin. Gordon didn't usually try to do the math—and he kept his combat overlays off, as with anything else—but that was something like thirty-six thousand damage. Enough to kill Harry once, and then half again over.
Gordon landed lightly, sliding sideways on the low-grip surface of his moccasins. The assassin—no, the half-elf from the previous duel, his false beard slipping askew—slumped to his knees.
"Did I do something to offend you?" asked Gordon. His leg stung where the bullet had impacted, but it felt like a through-and-through. A gesture to Marie and he was passed a health potion, which he drank without taking his eyes off the slumped form of his assailant.
"Drop," wheezed the player, "Dead." The gun in his hand, neglected by them all, went off one more time, even as his eyes clouded.
A Bullet With Your Name On It has been activated. One Last Shot has been activated.
Gordon saw black.
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Healing was rough in Ghostlands. For whatever reason the same mind behind the magic system had decided that it was important for realism to include things like 'the stinging of exposed flesh' and 'stabbing pain of damaged muscles' to the healing process instead of something simple and clean. Gordon had to admit, as his vision returned, that the simulated pain felt great as it receded, but he still wasn't sure he approved of the design choice. He felt Karen's real hands on his shoulders, and he patted her leg to let her know he was okay. The pain from the haptics, part straight through the neurolink, part imparted through direct muscle stimulation using shocks, was more than enough to make him jumpy.
"We almost lost you," said Harry. "I didn't know Marie was a healer and a witch and an alchemist."
The avatar's hands were still glowing a brilliant, low saturation pink shot through with flickering gold.
"White witches trade curses for touch heal like a paladin," Gordon said shortly. "How the heck did I avoid dying?"
"Well," said Karen. "You were currently drinking a health potion when you got shot, mostly, would be what did it."
"Huh. Well, good timing, I guess."
"What I would want to know," Claire interjected, "If I were you and asking the good questions, is where he got such a nice holdout gun—mine now, by the way—and what sort of idiot would take not one but two vengeance traits. If he ever wants to be an effective player, he'll need to retrain those."
"Good enough as an assassin," Gordon said ruefully, rolling gingerly to his feet. His back was still sore—this from the real life results of the jolts of pain from the haptic suits, making his back spasm. "I think a nice coach ride sounds like the best thing right about now."
"I could really use a nice holdout gun," Harry started up as Gordon walked away from them. Gordon smirked — good luck with that.
The coach was old style, with wheels each of which were made from two half circles, joined with a square block, encircled with a beaten metal band. It looked rickety and untrustworthy—but it came with an NPC driver, and had leather cushions, so Gordon was content. "You know," he said, once firmly ensconced between Karen's character, Marie's avatar, and two cushions (behind his back), "I think this has got to be media attention doing this."
Karen gave him a sarcastic side-eye from two inches away. "Really," she mocked him. "You don't think people would think you were important enough to try to kill for clout otherwise?"
Put that way, it was a pretty self-apparent thing to say.