Poll World [LitRPG][Reader Polls]

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Following the path of the mechs wasn't difficult. A thousand multi-ton murder machines left a trail of devastation in the form of potholes and smashed buildings, even if you ignored the pulped zombie iguanas that blanketed the ground.

Jasper didn't react to the smell, and she assumed his overpowered suit was filtering the air. The gremlins didn't breathe, and she likewise was immensely thankful her plastic state of being didn't come with a functioning nose.

Ding~!

Gen suppressed her rage-filled reaction. She couldn't beat LEO, but at least she could deny him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her.

Unaware of her mental setback, Jasper was sprinting along the road at an Olympian pace. She wasn't jealous of not getting to use her enhanced body, not jealous at all…

Flying higher, she scouted ahead, looking for threats. There was no sign of Trank or Solomon, and she hoped they came out on top against the sniper they were chasing.

After only about ten minutes, she started hearing the Gatling guns firing in unison, a sound CJ knew very well. During the Gene Wars, similar model P mechs would enter cities and exterminate the populace, preparing it for resettlement with minimum infrastructure damage on a regular basis.

CJ had destroyed at least a thousand of them, and she mentally tried to catalog what weaknesses she knew of.

They were slow to rotate and couldn't handle fast-moving targets. Their weapons were small caliber and couldn't easily penetrate thick armor. When knocked over, they were like turtles that couldn't stand up independently.

Jasper's boss zombie form with superspeed could've carved through them like butter as long as he didn't get trapped in an oil slick or something.

Flying above them as a flamingo, Gen felt she could turn a handful to plastic easily, but she wasn't nearly fast or armored enough to last more than a few seconds once she got their attention.

Even Jasper's overpowered armor wouldn't last under their sustained fire.

Drawing close enough to see the situation, she saw the mechs making a slow march forward while a literal tide of zombie iguanas swarmed at them from the front.

A constant hail of bullets melted the zombies and destroyed buildings, leaving a clear-cut path of devastation as the army drew closer and closer to her headquarters.

At the front lines, there were hundreds of shields and force fields visible as an army of protagonists protected the mech's slow advance.

Clearly, someone was controlling the zombies as they'd rally into groups of different types, whether explosive, armored, or spitter, and kept trying to force a break in the mech line.

Toxic shots were blocked, explosive iguanas were blasted back, and armored iguanas were disabled through ice, oil, and even slime.

The iguanas with advanced combined mutations lasted longer, but weren't numerous enough to overcome the sheer volume of bullets.

With so many protagonists present, they seemed to have a counter for every type of iguana, and the zombies' only use was to draw fire as antagonists frantically laid traps and altered the terrain.

The mechs struggled with complex or hilly areas, so the terrain alteration was a good idea, but the protagonists evidently had their own abilities and equipment that were terraforming things back to flat ground at a steady pace.

Gen tried to spot a weak point and failed. If all of these people had still been on the quarantine wall, she never would've had the opportunity to take it down.

At their current pace, they would reach the headquarters in under an hour.

Ding~!

Gen noted the poll completion, but being nowhere near the UFO, she couldn't inspect it to see what actually changed. She trusted Hon would know what to do. Probably…

Flying back to Jasper, she found him taking cover in a mostly destroyed building as he looked over the battlefield, frowning.

Her own gremlins were sticking close to him, trying their best to look like cool bodyguards.

Hon's gremlins with explosive weapons, on the other hand, were itching like crazy to run into battle. Hon had given them the simple order to follow Jasper's orders, but unsurprisingly, the gremlins' discipline was rapidly wearing thin without Hon present to reinforce the command.

She judged in about five minutes that the whole lot of them would start blowing things up with abandon.

Jasper didn't look rushed, though, as he turned to the electric crowd and addressed the ragtag army.

"Destruction is a unique form of joy, the act instantaneous and ephemeral, but the result more lasting than any act of creation."

The gremlins tilted their heads, mirroring Gen's own confusion.

"I have tasted the succulent bliss of mayhem while in my larger form, and I do not begrudge you your instincts. Nay, I believe that being true to yourselves is the only correct way to live."

The gremlins began murmuring in their chittering, unintelligible electric voices.

Jasper held up a hand, silencing them, "I only have one ask of you. Make the most of your existence and do not fall short of your own aspirations! A firecracker and a pipe bomb are both explosive, but I feel I know which you all prefer. Attacking now would be true to yourselves, but such a small impact would betray what I know you are all capable of."

He pointed his finger and raised his voice, "The longer the fuse, the bigger the explosion, my comrades. Wait just a few minutes, and I promise to deliver you an opportunity of truly hellish destruction."

The gremlins were silenced by those words and, as a unit, gave Jasper a long, measuring look before nodding their assent.

Their electric fingers that had demonstrated the worst trigger discipline in the history of firearms actually relaxed as they laid their weapons down and waited with anticipation.

Jasper turned to Gen, "That should be sufficient for the moment. Now let's go meet with our teammates."

Gen couldn't help but spin her eyes in confusion. Despite her best efforts to be desensitized to Jasper's doings, she kept being caught off guard by his abrupt decisions.

Her own gremlins had only been under control because of her constant mental commands. If they weren't actively blowing something up, they were looking for an opportunity to blow something up, and Jasper had curbed that with a speech??

She really was starting to feel like the minion in this relationship. Could he steal her viewers? Was that even a thing?

Ignoring her turmoil, Jasper stepped off the rubble he was using as a platform and started sprinting again.

The gremlins were rapidly left behind as Gen flew after him, confused. The antagonists she'd seen slowing the mech advance were in the opposite direction Jasper was running.

Abruptly, he stopped in an unremarkable area of devastated landscape. He looked around them with a considering expression before addressing the open air.

"Reveal yourselves, we are aligned in purpose if not in thought, and I seek discourse with you."

Nothing happened for a moment before, abruptly, the air shimmered, and they were surrounded by armed men pointing guns at them.

"Gen!"

A figure pushed aside one of the men and ran forward, grabbing Jasper in a hug. Belatedly, Gen recognized Francine with a cautious Todd trailing behind them.

Jasper gruffly removed Francine from himself and held them at arm's length.

"I merely temporarily have this grotesque human visage." He pointed his thumb at Gen, "That thing is your compatriot."

Todd narrowed his eyes, "You're not Gen? Then who are you?"

Jasper held up his arms, "You stand in the presence of none other than Jasper himself!"

Todd looked confused and turned to Francine, who also looked uncertain before saying, "That's the name of Gen's iguana… the one that turned into the special zombie and ate all the restaurants."

Todd still looked tense, and Francine turned to Gen, "Umm, Gen, is that you?"

Unsure how to answer, Gen just flew closer and spun her eyes around as usual.

Francine hesitated for only a moment before giving her a hug.

Todd spoke from the side, "Not to interrupt the reunion, but how did you find us through the cloaking field?"

Jasper looked at him and said, "Simple, your sensory obfuscation couldn't hide an ally from me." His eyes narrowed, "Nor an enemy."

Moving with superhuman speed, Jasper decapitated one of the men pointing a gun at him, before throwing his hammer at another standing in the back.

When the hammer struck the second man, he exploded into gore, not leaving even an ounce of flesh intact.

The remaining men opened fire on Jasper in panic, and Gen cowered behind Francine.

Todd shouted, "Hold your fire!"

A few more shots pinged against Jasper's armor before, belatedly, the men stopped firing.

Jasper brushed some gore off his arm, looking unperturbed.

"Now that the infiltrators are gone, time is of the essence. I have a group capable of extraordinary violence, but lacking in even the most basic survival instincts. You all appear to have a most intriguing device. Together, I think we can do great things."

Switching perspective~

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***

Rosalina was sweating like crazy. She was level 1, and her ability was only useful for rapidly fermenting things. While it was essential to supply her bar, it wasn't much use in an event like this, so when the waiting list for a mech pilot opened up, she applied without hesitation.

What they hadn't bothered to tell her was that the damn things had no AC!

It wouldn't be that bad, but the Gatling guns got hot if they were fired too long, and she'd been firing them nonstop for hours.

Not only that, but somehow the smell of steaming rotten flesh was seeping into her cockpit.

"How many damn iguanas are there!?"

"Rose, this channel is for combat updates, not for your complaints."

"Shut the hell up, Stew! I'm this close to going postal and saying fuck this whole event! What the fuck is Susan even doing!? We've got the whole god damn zombie population of the event and a thousand antagonists here, and she can't blow up one building!? Is level 7 a joke? I heard the enemy commander is level 3! She's got double his level, a Gundam, the fortress, all these mechs, and still we've been trudging along on zombie guts for hours and still haven't reached the target! And to top it all off, the quarantine was destroyed!? I've got a watch and it says in an hour, all hell's breaking loose if we don't crush this thing already! Have you seen a fusioncrack zombie, Stew!? Because those fuckers are nasty and I don't want to see a boss one when we apparently couldn't even handle a normal armored boss! At the end of each day, when LEO tells us we're doing a good job, you know he's mocking us right!?"

"..."

Rosalina flipped off her mic and kept grumbling to herself as she pumped lead into yet another swarm of iguanas. For once, they looked normal if you ignored the black veins, much better than those freaky beach ball-shaped ones that exploded rotten flesh all over the place when they died.

Her comm crackled again, but it wasn't Stew reprimanding her. Instead, it was Becca from the mech next to her.

"Umm, guys, there's a little lightning man that just appeared. I think he has a bazoo---"

Rosalina heard an explosion echo from both the comm and right outside her mech, cutting Becca off. Following it was a series of several hundred more explosions and the sound of screaming, panicked voices.

Frowning, Rosalina rotated her mech, her scowl intensifying as it took agonizingly long to spin. The mech factory just got another set of upgrades, so better mechs were coming out now, but she'd gotten the first batch, and it was a piece of shit at doing anything other than obliterating things right in front of it.

Eventually, she spun enough to see Becca and wished she hadn't. A gremlin matching the ones from the quarantine wall battle report was standing victoriously on top of Becca's mech, waving its bazooka around like a flag.

Not only that, but behind it, dozens more of the things were all over the place like cockroaches as they blasted mechs while cackling. The ground troops that had been supporting them likewise were lying dead all over the place.

Taking aim she avenged Becca, turning the little fucker to dust and flipping her mic back on.

"Hey, Stew, we've got gremlins all up our ass crack! Judging by the way they materialized out of fucking air, I'm willing to bet those spies that kept saying they had the fortune wardens and their invisibility shit under control did not in fact have them under control!"

Not waiting for his excuses, she unloaded on some more gremlins, cursing repeatedly. Her bar was short-staffed, so tonight was going to be another sleepless one even after the event. If she wasn't desperate for emmys, she'd just let the things kill her so she could get some fucking sleep.

In front of her, several people were scurrying around, and some were shooting at each other. The gremlins were obvious whose side they were on, but the people were a toss-up, as she hadn't socialized enough to recognize her fellow protagonists. She wasn't in the mood to lose contribution points, so she ignored them and shot more gremlins.

Two gremlins were cooperating with a weapon, and she cringed as they turned to face her mech and fired. As the explosive smashed against her mech and turned her left gun into scrap, she couldn't help but question why each of the gremlins was missing an arm.

Leveling her remaining weapon on them, she was about to fire when something smashed into her remaining gun. There was no fiery explosion, but instead a brief moment of sparkles.

The gun looked completely undamaged, and she stared at it suspiciously before deciding to pull the trigger.

Immediately, her machine vibrated with familiar recoil, but something was wrong. The metal gun barrels weren't spinning and instead melted into hot slag like they were made of plastic.

Left with a useless mech, she sighed in resignation and checked her inventory, confirming it was all junk. If she survived this, at least hopefully she'd get to loot something cool from her dead allies.

She'd objected to Stew's "strategy" several times, but seeing his operation go up in flames was a terrible consolation prize when she was still stuck in the middle of it.

Ding~!

LEO's voice sounded in her head. It was familiar from the daily updates, but it was the first time she'd heard his voice directly in her head since her first and only scenario run.

Rosalina! You've heard hindsight is 20/20, right? Well, when you're bottom of the corporate ladder, military hierarchy, or… what exactly are you protagonists calling yourselves currently? Anyway, you're at the bottom, and your boss is an idiot. It's obvious to everyone that it's his fault, and you'll get blamed anyway, so here's a compensation prize!

Her heart skipped a beat with the poll. She didn't have a single viewer last she checked, so she had no idea how she was getting a poll suddenly, but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth!

If she could just survive long enough for the poll to resolve, she might be able to reverse things and get enough contribution points to earn a vacation, or at the very least pay off some loan sharks!

The fact that she'd gotten a poll by bad-mouthing Stew didn't faze her at all. The bastard deserved it. He was a nephew of some high-level family and had been assigned command of the mechs arbitrarily.

Collecting herself, she started retreating with the mech. It was slow, but heavily armored, and she wasn't about to go outside and get blasted by lightning when a poll was on the line!

An explosion rocked her mech from the back, and her front view was covered in gravel as the whole mech fell forward and smashed into the earth. Cursing, she didn't even bother to try and stand it back up, instead unbuckling her harness and taking a shotgun out of her inventory.

The mech's interior was dark, and she crouched on the windshield as she stared up and considered pulling the emergency exit lever. Dead in the water, she was vulnerable, but at the same time, who would target a downed mech? Maybe holding tight until the poll resolved was her safest option…

The mech shook, and she felt heat as another explosion crashed into it.

"Why are you still shooting at me!? I'm dead, leave me be!"

Another explosion, and she felt more heat as the mech started filling with smoke.

"Dumb fuckers!"

Pulling the lever, the hatch whooshed open above her, and she threw herself out into the open with her gun leveled. The sight around her had worsened severely from moments before. Dozens of mechs were inoperable, some with giant holes and others looking like melted plastic. Her eyes ignored all that as she saw the familiar figure of Stew being paraded around by a gaggle of gremlins, something was wrong with him though… His arms were taut, and his face frozen like a shopping store mannequin.

Pulling her eyes away from the fiendish sight, she saw two gremlins cackling while pointing at her. One had a bazooka and the other a grenade launcher.

"Oi! You two!"

Pointing her shotgun, she held the trigger down and fought back against the fully-auto recoil as buckshot sprayed wildly. The gremlins were still laughing as they exploded into bits of electricity.

Another explosion caused her to duck, but it was on Becca's mech this time instead of her own. Another set of gremlins was taking turns shooting the thing while completely unaware of the death of their allies.

Shrinking back, she took cover behind her downed mech and weighed her options. Gremlins were all over, but the protagonists were rallying and starting to kill the gremlins off one by one.

In the distance, she could still hear mechs firing and knew the battle wasn't completely lost, but as the wind shifted and stink assaulted her nose, she remembered what the original threat was.

Panicked, she rushed back into her mech and tried to pull the hatch shut a moment too late as an armored iguana zombie lunged forward, biting her arm.

You have been infected!

Infection quality "Low"

You are level 1, you have thirty seconds to apply an antidote.

"Not today motherfucker!"

Shooting it one-handed, she immediately regretted the decision as the recoil blasted the gun out of her hand, and the explosive sound echoed in the metal mech, deafening her.

The zombie at least reared back from the shot, but didn't die. It was shaking its head as it inched back down the open hatch. She struggled with her inventory and drew out a punching glove with a homerun enchantment.

She never imagined she'd actually use it after Stew had given her the garbage item as a sign-up bonus, but as she smashed it into the iguana and sent it flying, she reconsidered her earlier evaluation.

Not hesitating, she slammed the hatch shut, locking it just in time to hear scratching and growling as a horde of zombies swarmed the position.

Five seconds remaining before infection…

Frantically withdrawing an antidote, she choked as she forced down the minty potion.

Infection cured!

Breathing a sigh of relief, she took her time bandaging her arm. Outside, she could hear renewed explosions and chaos as the zombies swarmed over the remaining protagonists and gremlins alike.

"At least there are idiots on both sides…"

Switching perspective…

***

Francine was sweating as they watched the zombie iguanas finish off the protagonists and remaining gremlins. They were activating the stealth field, which cloaked an area of twenty feet around Francine. It blocked sight, smell, and even sound from escaping the bubble. Francine earned it as a poll reward after the initial negotiation with Todd's group, and it was upgraded to AOE after they had successfully started 100 special zombie incubations.

Inside the cloaked area, Francine, Jasper, Gen, Todd, Gen's three remaining gremlins, and Todd's four remaining fighters all stood close together.

Occasionally, a zombie iguana would accidentally enter their field, and they were forced to destroy it.

Todd laid a hand on Francine's shoulder, and his hand glowed with healing light. His expression was worried as he looked over the chaotic battle outside.

"It just seems like such a waste to lose the gremlins…"

Jasper shook his head, "This is their path and what they wanted."

A pair of gremlins exploded as a zombie iguana detonated right on top of them, and Jasper nodded authoritatively, "They wouldn't want it any other way."

Todd looked skeptical, but shook his head and continued using his ability to heal the survivors.

Gen flew to the next in line for healing, and he looked at her skeptically before placing a hand on her and activating his power.

ERROR YOU ARE NOT ALIVE AND CANNOT BE HEALED

ERROR YOU HAVE FEET

ERROR YOU ARE PLASTIC

ERROR WHY DO YOU HAVE TOES

ERROR ERROR ERROR

Todd shrugged, and Gen spun her eyes around in disappointment. Her cracked body was a source of anxiety and constant pain that she had yet to find a resolution for.

The battle had gone even better than she had hoped. Using Francine's stealth field, the gremlins and Todd's forces had crept to the center of the mech formation before unleashing a devastating sneak attack.

The slow mechs hadn't been able to turn fast enough, leaving the mechless protagonists as the main threat.

Gen had played her part by unleashing a constant gnome barrage, disabling mechs as well as turning protagonists into a growing mannequin collection.

Hundreds of gnomes fired in quick succession had been just as devastating as expected. Todd's abilities were focused on buffing and healing allies. His geometric tattoos could be fired for a variety of effects based on the shape, and he could also gift a tattoo to any ally if desired.

Anyone with one of his lent tattoos or under the effect of his healing buff had enhanced physical stats as well as faster recharging abilities.

Jasper had received a triangle tattoo on his hand, which pushed his already top-notch body even further into superhuman territory. He'd charged right into the thick of things and left splattered and decapitated protagonists in his wake.

Francine had surprised Gen with their ferocity as she got her first good look at Francine's wood-shooting ability in action.

Wooden stakes were fired one after another, punching through body armor and impaling throats without mercy.

Gen wouldn't trade summoning iguanas, but she had to admit it was pretty cool.

Still, the battle wasn't without losses. Mechs eventually managed to rotate, and the foot soldiers rapidly started fighting back.

Gen had hidden herself near Todd at that point, not trusting her fragile body to survive an errant shot.

The true goal of the ambush, however, wasn't to eliminate the protagonists but to give the suppressed zombie iguanas an opening. With the mech defense line collapsing, the tide of rotten bodies surged in to finish the job.

Some mechs were still left, but between G2n's forces and the iguanas, they were being mopped up quickly.

Her own group's zombie avoidance amulets were exhausted, so they had to stay hidden in Francine's stealth field.

Jasper hadn't tried to convince the gremlins to retreat, and Gen didn't trust them to stay hidden while invisible to begin with.

As it stood, it was a constant mental tax to keep her three remaining gremlins from shooting something. She had the two left with the railgun and one with some sort of lightning whip it had acquired on its own initiative.

Francine looked between Jasper and Todd uncertainly, "What's next?"

Todd looked at his phone, inspecting messages. "Let's head directly to the headquarters. Twen is asking for a full retreat now that the mechs are dealt with. There are only thirty minutes left before hatching time, and the mobile fortress is too far away to be relevant after all the effort to slow it down. The giant mech is tied up fighting something, so all that's left is Susan, who I guess is being a pain in the ass despite the downsizer."

Jasper nodded, "I agree with this course of action. The pawns have been scattered, and all that stands in the way of my family's awakening is the queen."

Todd gave him an odd look, but motioned for them to hurry ahead with Francine at the center, keeping them cloaked.

Gen cast a final look at the zombies swarming past the destroyed mechs and couldn't help but feel like a proud mother knowing they could spread freely now that the quarantine wall was gone.

Still, despite her plastic body, she felt a knot in her stomach. She didn't know the exact situation at headquarters, but Susan wasn't the type to go down easily, and things had been going too well for too long already.