The Bloodforged Kin

Everyone gathered around the table again. Tess took the lead, explaining the strategy the adults had been discussing.

"It's looking pretty dire out there - in 30 days we're going to be overwhelmed. There's no way of avoiding that. We," she nodded her head at her family, "might be able to survive it, but that's a big 'might.' You all," she nodded to the Bouchards, "may be able to survive in your compound but even that's risky. I'm betting we're going to see a pretty intense ramp-up of monster power with this."

Ed nodded. "I think so too. Everything The System has done has been to push us forward, and this specific challenge is obviously targeted at either getting everyone above level 10, or killing anyone that can't get there. We'll probably see plenty of monsters around that level, but I'm betting we're going to see a lot that are pretty far above it."

"There's also the boss monsters to consider," Cass said to nods all around. "We can probably handle those, but taking them all on? While dodging the lower-level ones too? That's pushing it."

"That's where the real challenge comes in," Tess said. While the others talked she and Fara had been surreptitiously discussing strategies, plans, and odds of survival, and it painted a grim picture that all led to one disturbing outcome. "We are supposed to team up. Everything we've seen makes it pretty clear that The System isn't just empowering individuals, it's trying to build an army. This challenge seems designed to make the powerhouses even stronger and build small militias. Anyone that isn't a part of one of those two groups is going to be killed off."

"Culled."

Tess acknowledged Fara's point. "Culled. What we need now is an action plan. Unfortunately, that's not my strong suit." Fara had suggested a lot of options, but ultimately she had no experience with managing large-scale armies. The power plant had been more of a plaything for her to experiment with and she'd grouped up creatures by type, rather than any sort of defensive or offensive strategies.

"Yup," Owen stepped up to the table. He pointed to the area surrounding their neighborhood. "So as I see it, we need to fortify this area. We can't fit a whole neighborhood in here so we need to make the neighborhood stronger."

"We're too spread out," Chloe was scrutinizing the white dots scattered randomly. "It looks like we have maybe 50 or so people in our general area," she looked at Madison and got a confirming nod. "Then there's maybe another 50 or so scattered a bit further out. We could get them here, but that still gives us the problem of creating a viable fortification."

"I can help with that." Everyone except the Bouchards looked up at the soft voice in surprise. Tess realized she'd never heard Jason speak before. "We can just move the houses. There's really no need to have them spread out like they are - we don't need yards and driveways anymore. We can move the houses into concentric rings around the cul-de-sac, like a castle with multiple walls. We can create bulwarks behind each that give us the high-ground advantage and install reinforced material between the homes. It will essentially create rings of houses that are shielded on the outside. We can repurpose some of the turrets on our walls, although we'll have to do that carefully since we'll be spreading limited resources out over a wider area. We'll definitely have gaps."

Tess's head was cocked to the side and her eyes unfocused for a moment too short for anyone to notice her mental conversation with Fara. She spoke up. "We can create intentional choke points that force monsters through a maze. We don't have to cover every inch of the walls, we can give them paths of least resistance to move through and heavily trap those areas. We - I think that the monsters will be relatively dumb, or at least instinctual. The System isn't likely to give us a lot of highly intelligent monsters at this point, although we can most certainly expect intelligence in some of the higher level ones."

If anyone noticed the accidental 'we' they didn't acknowledge it.

"This is too much." Cass was looking around the table, fear and disbelief in his eyes. "We should just run. Go to one of these areas with a lot of people."

"Nah, not gonna do that," Owen said.

"Our homes are here," Tess said. "I don't care so much about the house itself, but this is where we live. It's where your father knows to find us if - when he comes back." She caught her mistake too late, seeing the winces on the faces around the table. "Plus, our neighbors and friends are here."

"But the people here hate each other! And you hate them for attacking you! Other than us here, we don't have friends here!" Cass glared at the Bouchards, Tess, and Ed alike.

"We don't hate them, Cass," Tess said.

"I ain't a big fan o' them, myself," Owen said, chomping on his pipe stem in stubborn defiance.

"Look," Tess fixed everyone with their own individual glare. "What happened was messed up and it fractured us. We were never that close as a community anyway, but we have to acknowledge the truth if we're going to move on: Gabriel was only able to bring so many people under his spell because we created the situation that allowed that in the first place."

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She fixed Cass with a preemptive warning glare before continuing. "The people out there - our NEIGHBORS - they were looking for someone to lead them, and he was the only one who stood up and did it. I hate to say it, but that son-of-a-bitch did what none of us bothered to do: He turned our neighborhood into a community. Now we need to do that ourselves. Owen, you hate them? Get over it - they attacked because you refused to help them. Ed, you don't feel like working with them? You of all people should understand the spell they were under. Should I hate them for attacking my children and my husband? Maybe, but we don't have time for old and pointless grudges, they'll just get us killed tomorrow."

No one missed that she'd skipped Cass in her dressing down.

"So what that leaves us is two options - we can leave and try to fit into somewhere else, or we can rebuild this community. We start by bringing in our neighbors, then we branch out and collect all these other people who are just looking for someone to guide them, lead them - help them survive what's coming."

Ed continued with his thoughts. "I'm another vote for staying - there's really nowhere we can go. We could go to the city, but would likely be homeless and in indefensible positions. We could find other neighborhoods, but why would they be any safer than this? Our only real option is to fortify our position here."

Cass grew visibly upset at the agreement he saw on the faces around him. "But there are too many of them! We're going to die out there!" He began ticking items off on his fingers. "We have to move all the houses and somehow fortify them, we have to somehow find all these people and convince them to gather here, and we have to somehow get stronger in that time so that we can defeat the boss monsters who will likely be intelligent and powerful enough to bypass our traps and defenses!" He was breathing heavily, his voice shrill.

There was a moment of silence as everyone digested the truth of what he said. The tasks were daunting even in the best of times, but with a 30 day time limit? It was looking more and more impossible.

A small hand reached out and lightly touched Cass's back. The boy jumped, then settled into place as Luna began rubbing his back.

"That's only three things though."

He turned to her, fear driving him into anger. "What? Three things?"

"It's just three things, Cass. Sure, they're big things, but they're still just three things. What would dad say?"

Cass gritted his teeth, his jaw grinding in frustration. "He'd say 'Break the big problem into small ones, then solve the small problems. Identify the realistic goals, ignore the unrealistic ones, and solve each problem in order. Divide up the tasks by required skill set and assign owners according to their talents. Move fast, but not so fast that you introduce mistakes.'"

"He'd also say, 'Don't let perfection get in the way of getting it done.'" Luna said.

Cass chuckled. "He'd actually probably quote some rap lyric about 'well done is better than well said' or something."

"It's not going to be easy," Ed said. "But it's doable if we can put all the pieces together."

"Aight then, how do we start eating this elephant?" Owen sat down, pouring himself a beer.

The strategy session went late into the night. Jason would begin moving the houses - he was able to retrofit his material moving skids to allow them to dig their way under houses and move them to a new location. Without the need to preserve utility lines and pipes they could cut through everything at ground level and move the homes. It would leave a lot of open basements in the neighborhood, but they hoped those would turn into drop traps. The only thing they were lacking was bodies to help them move everything, which is where the Torres family came in.

Madison would send out drones that would play a simple message to any human life they found: "Follow me to safety." Cass and Luna would pair off to look for anyone further than the drones could get in a day. Cass's speed would let them get there quickly, and Luna would do the talking, which suited each of them just fine. Anyone that was ready to move immediately would be brought back by Cass. Everyone else would be left with a drone to follow on their own.

They tossed around the idea of forcibly moving everyone in, just to get it over with - but it was shot down instantly. What they gained in expedience they'd lose in good will and trust. No one liked to be kidnapped. That still left the question of what to do with anyone who didn't want to come. In the end they decided that, as long as they could get enough people to support the moving and man the defenses, they'd just leave any hold-outs alone.

The final question was what to do about anyone who was dangerous or evil. This part of the conversation was the most difficult, but also the most simple - there was nothing they could do about it right now. The odds were decent that someone they might not want in the neighborhood would encounter a drone and find their way back, but they'd have to deal with that when it came up. They weren't in the position to turn away help, so anyone that turned out to be harmful to the group would be dealt with at the time. Tess was confident that her danger sense would tip her off early and that she'd be able to deal with any threats.

Once they had gathered everyone they could it would be time to start bringing in powerhouses. When it really came down to it, Tess was the only powerhouse of the group. Cass and Luna were strong in comparison to the people in the neighborhood, but they weren't as offensive as she was. Cass was close, but that still only left two of them to fight off every creature that was too strong for the average human.

Instead, Cass would run to Milwaukee and attempt to convince as many powerful people as he could to join them. They didn't have anything to offer so they'd come up with a simple selling point: Stay where you are and share your experience with the entire city, or come to us and get all the experience points you could ever want. They were banking on the fact that the people who had advanced to higher levels would be attracted by even more power. Tess would take the motorcycle to find others, while Luna would take the golf cart, as it had come to be known, to bring back anyone who couldn't make it to the neighborhood in a timely manner or needed support. They'd discussed leaving anyone who wasn't mobile enough to make it on their own, but that was scrapped as well. They weren't going to start judging who to take in and who not to - they would take in everyone and protect anyone who couldn't protect themselves.

Madison, Ed, and Chloe would stay behind to create as many traps as possible. Ed had been experimenting with his blood magic and, although his spells may not have been heavy hitters yet, they could still do enough damage to kill or weaken the lower level creatures. The long recovery times and bodily stress his blood magic caused meant that he had to start laying his traps as soon as possible.

Owen would… well, he never said what he'd do and no one had asked. Owen would do as Owen did.