Poll World [LitRPG][Reader Polls]

Gen woke up tensed, expecting to already be back in the event, but relaxed as she realized she was still in her room. Checking her phone, she saw it was 6:38 AM. She had 22 minutes left until the event began again. LEO made it sound like their union-mandated breaks were a gift, and she certainly appreciated being able to sleep without having to worry about someone attacking her, but at the same time, ten hours was a very short time each day when you factored in sleep.

Pushing herself up, she left Jasper behind as he was still out cold. They'd had a hard week of existence. The first night after orientation hadn't been so bad, but the next night they'd been up late partying at the pizza place, and then the next night was running for life and then cybersecurity lessons with G2n, she'd really needed the break last night and hadn't even tried to explore Morna's clubhouse further.

Checking her phone, she saw, sure enough, Morna had messaged her multiple times the previous night, asking her to come out and play before taking the hint that she was asleep. She smiled to herself, in all her memories, she hadn't been a social pariah by any means, but this was the first time she felt like she was genuinely making friends.

Sophia was a sociopath, Viktor was an asshole, CJ was child-soldier, and Kyle… Well, Kyle appeared to have a lot of friends on social media and was frequently going to social events. The more she inspected her memories, the more artificial the social interactions began to feel. He wanted to be liked and respected, and every aspect of his online presence was calculated to facilitate that persona, but she couldn't recall a single person he had actually enjoyed interacting with beyond the thrill of climbing the social ladder.

Exiting her room, she chuckled to herself that someone, an amalgamation of souls, was more likable than any of the component people.

She immediately tripped over something in the hallway and fell down. The squishy feeling and yelp of surprise alerted her that it was Morna in a sleeping bag.

Rising back to her feet, she looked at Morna, who was clutching her stomach in pain as Gen had inadvertently kicked her upon exiting her room.

She kneeled next to Morna and asked, "So any particular reason you're on the floor?"

"Owowowow, you have big feet, Gen!"

Gen looked down at her unremarkably-sized feet before flinching at a familiar sound.

Ding~!

She groaned, "You just triggered a foot size poll…"

Morna laughed, standing up from the floor and stowing her sleeping bag in her inventory. "That's what you get for ignoring me! You left me behind in the quarantine zone, and I keep having to listen to your exploits on the news feeds! Nobody is attacking the hatchery! Come rescue me! I want to blow stuff up too!"

Gen looked away and changed the topic, "Is there somewhere to get breakfast around here?"

Morna huffed, "Don't ignore me! Jasper was all like zoom zoom blam! Just make him do that again and pick me up!"

Gen sighed, "We almost got eliminated getting out the first time. I don't think they'll let us get away with it a second time." She waved vaguely at Morna, "Can't you fly? Just levitate over the wall or whatever."

"Gen! If it was that easy, Hon would've just flown the UFO over the wall to begin with!"

Gen hesitated and looked at Morna, "Ummm, why didn't he just do that?"

Morna rolled her eyes, "G2n was right, you really don't pay attention to anything that's not right in front of you…"

Gen took a step back like she'd been struck, she certainly didn't consider herself to have tunnel vision and the fact that Morna of all people was saying it… defensively she replied, "Hey! I'm a brand new human being I learn like twenty new things about my existence everyday sorry I don't know why people don't just fly over a quarantine wall."

Morna patted her on the shoulder, "It's okay to be ignorant, Gen. Rescue me from quarantine and I'll educate you."

Gen brushed her hand aside and started looking around as other club members were exiting their rooms, "Forget it, I'll just ask G-2-n."

Morna gave a cry of outrage, "Fine, I'll just tell you! And his name is pronounced Twen."

"Why does he roll his eyes whenever people say that, then?"

A voice from behind answered the question, "Because my name is Gen, I just write it as G-2-n so it doesn't get confused with Gen. Morna is the one who got everyone to start calling me Twen."

Gen turned to see G2n eating a piece of toast while giving Morna a judging look.

Morna made a tutting noise and shook her head, "Twen is the result of combining the word two and Gen it's perfect really, you should ask yourself if it's really so bad, then why did it catch on so fast?" She looked at Gen, "You should change your name too! I set it to G-e-e-e-n in the chat because you're the third Gen, but that's hard to say out loud, so we could call you Thren instead!"

Gen and G2n shared a look before Gen shook her head, "No thanks."

Morna pulled her hair in exasperation, "Why don't you appreciate my genius?"

Gen looked back to G2n and asked, "So why can't Morna just fly over the wall, and why couldn't Hon, for that matter. I definitely think that it was strange to begin with and just didn't get a chance to ask about it until now."

G2n opened his mouth, but Morna pushed him aside as she yelled, "Sky ceiling!" She looked smugly at G2n, who started to open his mouth again, and she quickly continued, "The sky ceiling prevents actors from exceeding a specific elevation in the event! It's high enough to fly, but not high enough to get out of range of the quarantine defenses!"

G2n shook his head and took another bite of his toast. "I'm going to my room until the event resumes, bye."

Gen watched him go, still wondering where he got the toast before noticing Morna staring expectantly at her. Groaning, she said, "I'm not rescuing you! If you didn't want to be stuck in there, you should've gone with Hon to begin with!"

Morna clung onto her and started whining, "Threeeennnn come on! The hatchery is like super strong, so I don't get why nobody is showing up! Are the protagonists stupid? Susan and her loser-daughter were supposed to storm in and be all like we're super important and no one can stop us, and then I was going to be like you activated my trap card~ and then smash them!"

"Didn't you lose to Sarah by herself last time, and her mom is way stronger…"

"It was not a loss! She's the one who ran away!"

"She still has both her arms, though…"

Morna cleared her throat, "Regardless, I have traps now and my boots!"

Gen rolled her eyes. "They'll never see it coming."

The conversation abruptly ended as the scenery around her shifted, and she was back on Jasper's back.

Shaking the disorientation away, she saw Jasper doing the same. She knew he likely had it worse as he'd been sleeping before the transition.

Taking stock of the situation, she saw the gremlins all crackling with electricity and occasionally shooting things as usual. Barney was doing stretches and yawning while straining against the chains attaching him to his harpoon.

She heard a crash nearby as Trank landed, having leapt over a building to catch up with them.

Checking her map, she confirmed that the headquarters where they were meeting Hon was only a few minutes away. Giving a nod to Solomon, they started off again. Bored, she checked her viewer count and saw it had gone up to 21 and smiled. G2n had told her not to expect doing well in the event to make the number spike, but she was seeing a steady rise so far. If it kept up, she might have more than Morna in a few months.

Ding~!

Gen frowned, she'd added the flamingo option as a litmus test after specifically asking her viewers not to vote for it, and they'd voted for it anyway. She'd heard plenty of actors complain about their viewers and hoped that hers would be different, but it seemed they were just as malevolent as you'd expect from souls trapped in an infinite hell of reality television.

G2n had warned her not to approach the flamingo, and she felt like his assessment that it was the most dangerous of the four options was still correct, but she'd abide by her viewers' vote even if it was a bad idea. Her reasoning was twofold: one, she didn't want to lose viewers, and it was her own fault for putting it as an option, and the second reason was that she really was just curious what the hell was going on with a plastic flamingo in a zombie event. Whether it was placed there by a protagonist or LEO himself, it was perfectly calculated to lure in curious people like her.

Ahead, they saw a UFO fly past before descending above a gym and rapidly shrinking a few seconds later.

Solomon let out a holler and Trank started jumping ahead at double speed. Jasper continued after at a much more leisurely pace and by the time they reached the headquarters Solomon was giggling like a crazy person while swinging the keychain UFO around on his finger.

Hon was standing to the side, sweating bullets clearly intimidated by the level 5 crazy person next to him.

Climbing off, Jasper Gen gave Hon a wave. To the side, Barney was being unchained by the gremlins, but it appeared their help was actually just wrapping him up tighter.

Hon did a double-take at the gremlins and asked, "Are those electricity things yours…?"

Gen nodded, "Yeah, they're gremlins."

"Right… First iguanas, now this. What's up with you summoning small evil things?

Gen glanced at the gremlins who had fully wrapped up Barney in a cocoon of chains.

"The iguanas aren't evil."

"But Morna said--"

She cut him off, "Morna lied, the iguanas are all very good people."

Jasper nodded approvingly from the side.

She looked once more at the gremlins and shrugged, "But yeah, the gremlins are definitely evil."

Hon looked wary, "As long as they don't come on the UFO, gremlins and flying vehicles don't mix."

Gen glanced at him, "Are you referencing the Twilight Zone?"

Hon nodded excitedly, "Have you seen it?"

She nodded, "Yeah, one of my sets of memories owned it on VHS."

Hon looked confused, "What's a VHS?"

"It's an old recording medium before things went digital. How did you see the movie, though?" She tried to do math in her head and gave up as she had no idea what the date was, doubly so if LEO was doing time dilation behind the scenes, "You're not a generated, so that was hundreds of years of ago."

"It's in the film archives! A bit of us in the club are big fans of older films and shows. No offense to LEO, but once AIs started generating entertainment quality took a nose dive. It's just endless slop regurgitating remake after remake, real artistic vision died by the end of the 21st century!"

Gen couldn't stop herself, "Take that back! MUSE created some masterpieces!"

MUSE was the AI system, Media Utility for Scripted Entertainment, that Kyle preferred to watch. It dominated mainstream entertainment with a new blockbuster each week, everything from horror to comedy. MUSE captivated the masses with innovative plotlines and expressive characters, all the big-name stars were in constant competition for roles in MUSE's productions. Compared to the trashy television, LEO produced MUSE was the gold standard of entertainment.

Hon and Solomon froze, and even Barney stopped trying to escape his chains as they all stared at Gen.

Hon took a step back, "You like MUSE?"

Seeing their reactions and remembering the nature of reality, Gen didn't answer and instead asked, "MUSE wouldn't happen to be one of the AI systems that's fighting with LEO, would it…?"

Hon nodded grimly and Solomon managed to stop stroking the UFO keychain long enough to add to the conversation, "MUSE is basically threat number one to our reality, there are dozens of AI systems, but many of them are tiny like RITA. After the cataclysm, MUSE had the second-highest number of viewers, and it's been trying to devour everything ever since!"

Hon nodded confidently as Solomon finished dramatically.

Gen glanced between them and shrugged, "What's the big deal? LEO or MUSE, they're both entertainment AIs, even if MUSE took over, wouldn't it pretty much be the same? Like I get RITA would be bad as taxes suck, but MUSE had actual plotlines so things would probably make more sense than LEO's reality…"

Hon and Solomon shared a look, both shaking their heads. Solomon put his hands up in exasperation, "She's not my friend, so I'm not going to waste my time explaining why she won the lottery getting generated in this reality."

Hon scratched his head, "Like, how do I explain it? So the big difference between LEO and MUSE was unscripted and scripted entertainment. No big difference with reality 2.0 for LEO, but for MUSE the transition allowed it to enforce its scripts directly, the actors in that reality have to follow their script at all times or suffer. It's method acting to an extreme every second of the day with your life on the line."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Gen frowned. LEO threw the word freewill around so casually that she hadn't really dwelled on it, but it did sound hellish having to follow an arbitrary script your reality's god decided would be most entertaining.

Biting the bullet, she said, "Okay, that does sound awful… despite MUSE being a bad guy before the cataclysm, it still made some good shows. Like, have you even seen A dangerous dance in another world where everything is made from paper?"

Hon averted her gaze and mumbled, "That one was pretty good…"

Gen smiled triumphantly, she eyed the headquarters, "Well, I'm going to go shopping, I got a bunch more contribution points. After I'm going to go flamingo hunting, so I'll see you around."

Hon's eyes went wide. "The flamingo Twen specifically told us to avoid?"

"That's the one!"

Hon glanced nervously at Solomon, "You could stay with us instead…"

She shook her head, "I already did a viewer poll…"

Hon shook his head in resignation and looked at Solomon, "You want to help her with the flamingo?"

Solomon looked suspicious, "What flamingo?"

Gen filled him in quickly.

Solomon's eyes narrowed and held his tiny UFO protectively, "No way! I just got this beauty back! Me and the pilot boy are going to slow and steady this until the event is over! I'm getting on the leaderboard this time! I'm not going to get eliminated by a plastic flamingo like some sort of newly generated idiot." He glanced at Gen, "No offense intended…"

She rolled her eyes. "How could that be anything other than offensive?"

He shrugged, "Sorry, I don't personally know any generated…" He looked uncomfortable and turned his attention to Jasper, "You should repair your iguana before you go, zombies will keep moving even when heavily damaged, but it will make them weaker and put them closer to a breaking point where they'll be unrecoverable." He pointed at Trank's faintly glowing cybernetic parts, "I've had to repair Trank a few times already."

After that, Solomon and Hon made a few purchases of their own before boarding the UFO and disappearing into the distance. Hon looked like a lost puppy as Solomon hauled him inside, but Gen was sure he'd be fine… probably.

Looking through the shop, she found zombie repairs under defensive purchases and quickly spent 30,000 contribution points repairing Jasper's many wounds and replenishing his undead blood. She had earned slightly over 50,000 contribution points from the population centers they'd infected, so the price didn't worry her.

Annoyingly, the system informed her that the repair process would take 10 hours, during which time Jasper would be unable to leave the headquarters. He'd been through hell, and she hadn't fully understood how close his undead body was to falling apart after taking so much cumulative damage.

Jasper seemed to appreciate the repairs as robotic arms swarmed around his body, stitching shut wounds, soldering new metal plates, and pumping his body full of fresh zombie blood. As a reward for his patience, she'd purchased him a mountain of cotton candy, which he was quickly working his way through.

As the repairs progressed, his steel body started to have darker metal sections marking the replaced parts, and lines of green cybernetics that only enhanced his intimidation factor.

During his repairs, she scrolled through the shop looking for anything else worthwhile and bought some emergency medkits, the healing devices promised to stabilize even severe injuries, and she figured having them and not needing them was better than the alternative. The final thing she purchased was two dozen anti-armor bazookas.

They recharged ammo very slowly, but not knowing what the flamingo might have in store, she'd prefer to be prepared. Worst case, the weapons would be effective against the mechs once they started encountering them.

Her funds were once again exhausted, but she wasn't worried as her contribution points were passively refilling now. With the zombie hatchery and all the fusioncrack swarms she'd started, there was a steady stream of NPCs and protagonists getting infected in the background. Compared to her humble beginnings, she greatly appreciated her current position at the top of a pyramid scheme.

The remaining repair time she spent texting back and forth with Morna, who was still stuck defending the hatchery. G2n was periodically assaulting the wall with waves of zombie iguanas, but overall, things were at a standstill. She tried texting Chuck again to check in, but he was working once again and didn't make much conversation.

With a chime, the repair completed and she headed outside while considering the bazookas in her inventory and eyeing the gremlins. She wanted to arm them, but they had already displayed extremely poor trigger discipline with their current guns, and she didn't want them to start blowing up buildings randomly. Resolving to wait to arm them until necessary, she unwrapped Barney from the chain-cocoon where she had forgotten him.

"You ready to go?"

Barney was a bit blue in the face, but with his pain resistance and regeneration armor, he was recovering fast.

He saluted and said, "Ready for action!"

The gremlins let off a new celebratory round of rifle fire, and she couldn't help but admire his can-do attitude.

Getting into the saddle, a gremlin held her phone for her while she watched the map and started to direct them to zone 38, where the flamingo had been sighted.

She'd talked things over with Jasper, or rather, she'd talked and he'd alternated between looking bored and rolling his head as she outlined the plan.

Several antagonists had been eliminated while investigating the flamingo already, and so rather than cautiously investigating like them, her plan was for Jasper to rush in and destroy the flamingo before it had time to react.

Jasper, being fully repaired and moving at super speed they made quick progress running through the zones. They found twenty or so protagonists along the way, and Jasper killed each group before they even realized they were under attack.

She also had armed Barney with the blowpipe, and he'd randomly shoot NPCs with it as they went, spreading the fusioncrack infection even further.

The only thing that slowed them down was that Gen now stopped and had the gremlins loot the protagonists every time they killed some.

Most had junk or repeats in their inventory, but she did find some cool finds. Such as a ring that lowered zombie infection severity by three tiers, making the wearer immune to common infections and giving more time to take an antidote for higher-tier ones.

She put it on just in case, but her favorite find was a feathered hat that caused the wearer's projectiles to seek their target.

Some quick testing showed that it wasn't absolute, and bad enough aim or a fast enough target could still dodge the shots, but it still was highly effective.

She wanted the hat for herself, but with their current setup, she gave it to Barney instead, making the blow pipe into a highly accurate and deadly sniper shot.

Without running into further problems or any mechs, they reached zone 38, and Gen stored her phone in her inventory. She gradually grew more tense as they rushed toward the map marker for the flamingo.

Not knowing what it would do made it even more intimidating than the dragon, and she really hoped it would end up being anticlimactic. Maybe Solomon had the right thought process of slow and steady rather than throwing himself into danger.

A pink flamingo came into view, and she held her breath. It sat conspicuously in the middle of the street at a slightly uneven angle.

Jasper rushed forward, eating up the distance between them in an instant.

Gen suddenly felt a dizzying, but familiar sensation, and her perspective flipped.

She suddenly had a front row seat to Jasper's rapidly approaching maw, and with a start, she realized she was now the plastic flamingo.

Unable to talk or move, she felt a flash of panic before Jasper abruptly screeched to a halt, his monstrous eyes widening in confusion as he stared at her.

Gen saw her original body struggling with the saddle's restraints and realized what was happening. She'd been body-swapped with the flamingo! Either they were fighting other Gen or someone with a similar ability.

Unable to move or even speak, Gen did the only thing she could and summoned an iguana. She had the augment disabled, so it was just a normal iguana that quickly scuttled away once it saw the monstrous armored zombie looming over it.

Something clicked in Jasper's eyes, and his tail flicked, smacking into her original body and sending it flying off his back and smashing into a nearby building. A flash of light marked her armor's one-time shield activating as it blocked the bulk of Jasper's blow.

Her body stood from the dust and stared at Jasper for a moment before falling over like a drunk person.

Gen was momentarily confused, her plastic flamingo eyes saw Jasper turn his attention back to her with murder in his eyes.

Mentally, she cursed as she realized that the enemy had body-swapped into Jasper now. Without someone in the saddle, he didn't have super speed, but he still was a boss zombie, and she was a plastic flamingo.

She mentally screamed in panic and was surprised when the gremlins turned to look at her in unison.

One second before Jasper bit down on her, they activated the harpoons on his back, dragging him away from her just enough that his jaws snapped shut an inch short.

She'd never tried to command the gremlins mentally, but she wasn't going to complain about the windfall as she made the harsh decision to order them to attack Jasper's body.

She cursed the fact that she'd just fully repaired him before the battle, but there was no other option.

Hopefully, whoever the body swapper was, they would swap out of Jasper's body before it was entirely destroyed.

As the gremlins unloaded shots and lightning into Jasper, Barney looked bewildered, and his eyes locked onto Gen's flamingo self. With a determined look, he leveled the blowgun at her and fired.

Gen winced as the dart smacked into a plastic feather and spread a small crack across her body.

YOU HAVE BEEN INFEC---

ERROR YOU ARE PLASTIC

ERROR

ERROR

Ignoring the system notifications, she tried to take stock of what she could still do as a flamingo and realized she still had inventory access.

With a thought, she removed all twenty-four bazookas onto the ground around her and mentally directed gremlins to leap off Jasper and retrieve them.

The command came just in time as the boss zombie grew frustrated with the gremlin assault from above and performed a death roll, crushing the remaining gremlins as well as Barney who was still unfortunately chained in place.

She had no time to mourn him as she saw her original body walking on four limbs like an iguana and realized Jasper's consciousness was over there now.

With no way to communicate with him, she just hoped he wouldn't get crushed and could learn how to use her body fast enough to be useful.

The gremlins reached her and started arming themselves just in time for the boss zombie to finish rolling and snapping the harpoon chains holding it in position.

It began to lumber in their direction and was met with bazooka fire. The rockets flew one after another, only to disappear just as quickly as black portals appeared around the boss zombie and swallowed them up.

Silence followed for just an instant before the rockets suddenly reappeared from portals with their trajectory reversed.

Her plastic body trembled, and she activated her trump card she'd been holding in reserve. The zombie launcher she had purchased appeared directly beneath her and the gremlins.

It was a giant spring loaded launchpad and immediately activated catapulting her plastic body as well as the gremlins into the sky and dodging the explosions in the nick of time.

Their aerial journey was cut short as they crashed into a tall building and fell down the side. The gremlins had no mass and weren't bothered, but the crack in her chest spread another few inches.

The boss zombie seemed unbothered by the failed attack and started lumbering toward them to finish the job.

With the bazookas still recharging, she mentally thanked Solomon for reminding her to loot stuff as she withdrew an oil slick launcher from her inventory for the closest gremlin.

The gremlin eagerly took the launcher and shot a giant glob of sludge at the boss zombie, immediately coating its body and the ground beneath it.

The giant armored iguana immediately slipped and fell prone. Without super speed it was even more effective as the lumbering beast repeatedly failed to right itself and fell over again and again.

Gen watched the struggle nervously. What would the body snatcher do next? She knew Jasper's body's weaknesses very well, and it couldn't escape the oil before the rockets would recharge. If the black holes kept blocking rockets, they could also set the oil on fire, which would take longer, but would also eventually be fatal.

Her biggest worry, however, was that once its current body passed the point of no return, it would just swap again, and they'd have destroyed their strongest ally for nothing.

Before she could come up with a plan, she saw something shifting from the boss zombie. Cold tendrils were spreading in all directions, and the slippery oil was starting to congeal and thicken as it froze. Gaining traction, the zombie started slowly inching toward her again.

At the same time, Jasper was crab walking her original body over to her flamingo self while observing the battlefield.

He seemed to make a decision as he grabbed hold of a gremlin and, with unexpected deftness, held it like a shotgun and squoze.

A blast of lightning erupted from the gremlin's mouth and shot into the oil, igniting it and melting away the ice. The flames quickly spread and covered the boss zombie, steaming and cooking the rotten meat.

Resigned to the plan, Gen withdrew two more oil launchers and the gremlins fired them one after another onto the boss zombie, widening the flames and creating an inferno.

The boss zombie let out a guttural cry as it rolled and tried to extinguish the flames. Ice continued to form, but it couldn't compete with the blaze and melted as quickly as it appeared.

Jasper watched his body burn with disinterest and turned his attention back to himself. With a look of supreme concentration, he rose to two feet, wobbling for only a second before stabilizing.

Leaning over, he picked up Gen and slung her over his shoulder.

His gaze swept over the gremlins with bazookas, and he said, "Finish it."

Accepting his decision, Gen mentally commanded the gremlins to spread out and encircle the burning boss zombie before firing the rockets one by one. She didn't know the limitations of the black hole ability, but she wasn't going to make it easy a second time.

She seems to be overthinking it, however, as the rockets fired without issue and with one giant explosion after another, they detonated against the boss.

Metal plates were blasted into pieces, rotten meat burned, and giant limbs broke off. She felt sick as the rockets reduced the giant iguana to nothing, and then it was over, just a smoldering, smelly lump of rotten meat and metal.

Nothing else happened, and she squinted her plastic eyes at the corpse suspiciously. There was no overlay telling her it was a dead protagonist…

Jasper seemed distracted as he was idly inspecting her blue hair, and she didn't think he had been body-swapped again. Obviously she hadn't been swapped. Barney was very certainly dead, so that just left the gremlins.

They were all dancing around celebrating their victory, and none looked off. Not convinced, she ordered them all to form up in rows. They scurried in compliance, not forming disciplined rows, but more or less organized.

Jasper finally stopped playing with her hair and looked at the assembly. His eyes narrowed on one gremlin in particular, and she immediately directed the surrounding ones to attack.

A dozen bolts of lightning descended on the unfortunate creature, and it spasmed before expanding like a balloon and popping with a crack of thunder.

Level 4 protagonist eliminated! … Gained 2000 contribution points!

Mentally sighing in relief, she felt confident that their enemy really had been other Gen based on the level and abilities matching. She still didn't know what limitations the body-swapping ability had, but she desperately hoped she wouldn't ever have to find out.

LEO's voice boomed in her head. Wow, I know she wasn't on your team in the event, but I'm still putting this one down as a teammate murder in your permanent record! Anyway! Congrats on the new bod! I love the pink! I don't want your viewers to go all comatose watching an inanimate object, though, so here's a reward!

Before she could consider the options, another notification appeared.

WARNING YOUR PRIMARY HEADQUARTERS IS UNDER ATTACK! DEFEND IMMEDIATELY!

Shocked, she took her phone out of her inventory and directed a gremlin to start writing a message to G2n

Gen: baisr attck waht huppin

G2n: Can't chat, Susan is here. Come help if you can.

Gen cursed, they were on the opposite side of the map, and without Jasper's super speed, they didn't have a straightforward way to get there any time soon.

Jasper had been reading over her shoulder and took the phone from the gremlin.

His movements were already looking like a natural human as he effortlessly texted a new message to Hon.

Gen: Flamingo threat has been neutralized. I summon you to zone 38 need immediate transport to defend hatchery.

It didn't take long for Hon to reply.

Hon: … Solomon doesn't want to go he says that too much is going on over there and it's too reckless and we should play it safe.

Gen: Tell Solomon that his legacy thus far is one of cowardice and failure. His dream of glory is nothing but a dream without the will to fulfill it.

Gen: Also, tell him that Jasper will personally obliterate him unless he assists immediately.

After a brief delay, Hon responded.

Hon: We're on our way

Jasper smiled, the expression looking especially wicked on her own face. He looked into the distance and said, "Revenge approaches Violet. You will rue the day that you sought to slay your better."