Thanks to Brock’s damage-amplifying nature, the explosion of my right hand was powerful enough to fling me backwards with such force and speed that I skipped across the pavement, friction burn tearing away my skin and leaving red skidmarks.
Garold the Skinstealer was reduced to a pair of smoking free-standing legs, the rest of his body obliterated.
Bee ran over to where I landed halfway down the street.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Somehow Panda was on her shoulder, having apparently gotten away just in time to avoid the explosion.
I groaned as I sat up.
Bee winced as she saw my face.
Tina walked over as well and, when she saw me, she gave me a thumbs-up and said, “Nice skull.”
I sighed. “Not again…”
I couldn’t actually feel the pain of what had happened to me, but the absence of feeling in my face clearly meant that a lot of bits were missing.
“What happened to Brock?” Panda asked.
I looked down at my right arm. The hand was totally gone. But unlike the last time this had happened, Brock was stretched up the entirety of my arm’s remainder like a sleeve. For some reason, he prevented my Unicorn Suit from repairing itself, giving me quite an odd look, since I now had a stump right arm with a balloon pulled over it.
“You okay there, Brock?” I asked him.
When he didn’t immediately respond, I feared he might’ve been seriously injured.
Then he whispered, “That was traumatic. And not in a good way… Brock’s feeling like he wants to stay as a tube sock until he works through what just happened.”
“You can’t do that,” I told him. “I need you to be able to fight.”
“Don’t force him if he doesn’t want to,” Bee scolded me.
“Also, you can’t really fight without your hand,” Panda added.
“Eat this,” Bee said, handing me a large strawberry.
[‘Peach-nana-berry’ x ]
Consumable
A fruit grown in the bountiful gardens of the Absolute known as the All-Mother.
Eating this fruit has a restorative effect.
Weight: Approximately half of one
“Where’d you get this?” I asked her.
“It’s from one of my new skills,” she replied.
I bit down on the strawberry and a flavor of peach and banana quickly dispersed through my mouth, before the purple curse’s eggplant taste overpowered it. Whatever Absolute was behind Brock’s curse, it was clearly at war with the All-Mother. A war taking place inside my mouth…
Slowly, the skin on my face started to knit itself back together.
“You’re recovering about 0.2013% every 3 seconds,” Panda announced, “which means you’ll be healed back to full in about 7 or 8 minutes.”
“What are your new skills?” I asked Bee. “You said you got a new Class too, right?”
Instead of explaining it to me, she shared her status.
[Status x ]
Level 20 — ‘Bee’ — Afflictionist
INSANITY GAUGE: N/A
STATS
Health: 12 — Stamina: 18
Armor: 16 — Carry Weight: 40
Top Speed: 14 km/h — Mana: 36
ATTRIBUTES
Strength: 2 — Dexterity: 5
Intelligence: 18 — Vitality: 6
Athleticism: 5 — Perception: 6
Wisdom: 14 — Defense: 8
ABILITIES
All-Mother’s Fruit Basket
Moth Dash
Rotting Touch
PASSIVES
Affliction Master
All-Mother’s Chosen
Inanimate Voices
ULTIMATE
Fast Forward
I looked through the skills, curious what they all did.
[‘All-Mother’s Fruit Basket’ x ]
Gifted Ability
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Gifted to Player Bee by the All-Mother.
How can I receive a power like this?
Food-delivery magic is hard to come by, so I’d really like to know.
Manifest a fruit from the All-Mother’s Garden specifically suited to your current situation.
Cooldown: 15 minutes
[‘Moth Dash’ x ]
Ability
Disengage from any situation by manifesting a pair of moth wings and dashing up to 20 meters away, becoming temporarily invulnerable to damage.
This Ability taps directly into your soul to summon a pair of wings, which is cool.
Like with teleportation skills, rapid movement plus invulnerability can lead to a lot of bad situations, especially if used to move through something.
So, use with caution.
Cooldown: 10 minutes
[‘Rotting Touch’ x ]
Ability
I knew a gal with this kind of power.
All she wanted to do was grow flowers, but everything she touched decayed in her hands.
I’m personally not a fan of rotten food, since it ruins the taste, but I’ve heard your kind likes to spoil food on purpose before eating it.
I can’t say I approve.
Inflict Rot on an organic being by touching them.
Cooldown: 1 minute
[‘Affliction Master’ x ]
Passive
Simple and powerful.
Soon enough, you will become quite a terrifying little girl.
Woe be to any who draws the All-Mother’s ire.
Increases the effectiveness of afflictions by 10% for each affliction active on a target.
[‘All-Mother’s Chosen’ x ]
Gifted Passive
Gifted to Player Bee by the All-Mother.
It’s rare that the Absolutes choose a mortal to champion them.
The All-Mother has never done it before now.
I’ve heard she’s quite scary when she’s mad, so I pity whoever has angered her enough to make her take such a drastic measure as to appoint a Chosen.
Your defense-oriented Attributes are raised, and you become immune to Insanity and its effects.
[‘Fast Forward’ x ]
Ultimate Ability
Quite an insidious power if you know how to wield it.
Normally, this kind of power lies in the realm of the Timeless Dragon, but I suppose the Absolutes enjoy drawing inspiration from one another.
Indicate a target and accelerate them, increasing the speed of time their body experiences by 100 times.
Cooldown: 1 hour
“Looks like you’ll end up being a damage-over-time type Class,” I said. “With just Rotting Touch and Fast Forward alone you should be able to kill any organic enemy we come up against, since Rot doesn’t look like it has a cooldown.”
“I told you the All-Mother is scary…” Panda muttered.
“What do we do now?” Bee asked.
“We have to find Otto,” I said, “but he could be anywhere, so we need to get transportation, since neither of you have movement skills anymore.”
Bee’s eyes lit up. “Is it finally time!?”
I grinned. “Yeah, let’s go catch a Humanbus!”
“First,” Panda said, stopping me from taking off, “activate your Rules of Anarchy.”
[‘Rules of Anarchy’ x ]
Fusion Passive
“Fuck the law! Fuck the rules! Fuck the authorities!”
“I make the rules around here now!”
Pick a new rule that only applies to you from the following options:
- Respawn Once -
- Fuck Gravity -
- Fall Guy -
- Commuter Pass -
Your choice can be altered every hour, but you cannot go back to an option you already used.
All options recharge at the start of the following day.
“The Commuter Pass won’t work,” Tina said. “We have to defeat it properly to use the Safe Zone Sphere on it.”
I frowned. “Damn it.”
“At least activate the respawn passive,” Panda advised.
“Rules of Anarchy(Respawn Once),” I said obediently.
Rules of Anarchy Activated!
Passive Selected: Respawn Once
Description:
Upon death, respawn at the beginning
1 Use
“Are you sure it won’t respawn you back in your original dimension?” Bee asked, giving me a new fear I hadn’t even considered.
“Uhh…” I replied.
“Come on,” Tina said. “I know how to get the attention of the Humanbus.”
She immediately took off running, leaving Bee and I to catch up.
After a few minutes of running Bee was out of Stamina, so I carried her on my back while she pointed past my head to guide me.
“Why is she so fast!?” Panda muttered in confusion.
Eventually we found Tina standing next to an intact bus stop. It was an angled metal roof attached to a single wall with a bench under it. Next to it was a pole where the different bus lines and their destinations would have been listed, but now it just said “666 Madeville Circuit”.
I set Bee down on the ground and tried to catch my breath.
“You’re fast,” I told Tina.
Instead of replying, she said, “I need a bus.”
“I really hope this works,” Panda said pessimistically.
“It will work,” Tina stated confidently.
We waited for half a minute, and then the voice of the Humanbus rang out across the industrial area we were in.
[YUMMY-YUMMY! PASSENGERS ARE ABOUT TO ENTER MY TUMMY!]
“I think I can kill the Humanbus with my new ability, since it’s mostly organic,” Bee said.
“We’re not killing it,” I told her.
“I know. But I’m just saying.”
The ground rumbled under our feet and then the large sentient bus monster appeared down at the end of the street, its crazed foglight eyes staring right at us and its mouth full of buckteeth grinning ominously.
Despite Tina’s confidence, I took a step back and clenched my right fist.
Except, it still hadn’t grown back…
“Fuck,” I muttered as the Humanbus came all the way down to our bus stop. Its many feet made tapping sounds as it moved across the pavement.
Its eyes stared at us while we approached it, then a hiss of steam and air emerged from the side of its head to reveal a door.
Tina was the first to enter, then Bee, and finally me.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now we have to win its Game,” Tina said with a cheerful smile.
We moved past the brain filling the driver’s side up front and found three seats. The chairs were just like those of the previous bus I’d used after dying to the CPS and losing Bee. Tufts of hair poked out of the large stitches in the human skin fabric, but the chairs were surprisingly soft.
Sitting in some of the seats were ghostly images of people, no doubt those that had been unable to escape the mouth of the Humanbus. Still, there were only five in total, which I thought boded well for how many had survived so far.
The door closed with an intake of air and then a chime rang through the bus, followed by its voice.
Thank you for choosing to use your local ‘Bus’ service!
You are currently riding the 666 Madeville Circuit line.
It is now time to play “Tickets, Please”!
The participants must work together to decide if passengers are allowed to enter by using the tools available to them.
These tools include: the ‘Passenger Blacklist’ to keep bad-bad boys from entering; the ‘Ticket Template’ to check if a passenger’s ticket is real or not; and the ‘Banned Items’ list.
Should you allow a Bad Passenger to enter, one of the participants will be consumed.
The GAME ends when either five Good Passengers have boarded or no more participants remain.
Player Abilities and Passives are disabled for the duration of the Mini GAME.
You may only disembark once you have beaten the Mini GAME!
Good luck!
