MADMAN APOCALYPSE

“There’s No Escape!” I yelled as we arrived outside of the dungeon entrance, my index finger pointing directly at where Logan appeared.

ERROR!

This ability is on cooldown.

Time left:

37,917,612,887 μs

“It still has over 10 hours left before you can use it again!” Panda deciphered.

Logan didn’t immediately take off running like I’d expected, but instead pulled out a black serpentine sword that let off noxious dark-red vapor. Its blade was pockmarked and rusted, but seemed unmistakably powerful.

“I think that’s his reward from the Weaponlution Event!” Panda said.

With a loping gait, he came at me, swinging the blade wildly.

“Die...! Die! Die!!”

The Nasty Concoction slowed my movements to the point that I knew I couldn’t avoid his attack, so I instead decided not to evade it.

“Gotcha!” I said, his filthy soap-bubble immediately disappearing from his body.

gasm.org Activated!

Ability Stolen: Corrupted Barrier

Original Player: Logan Maximillian

“Catch it!”

The bubble he’d had a second ago appeared around me just in time to absorb his attack. As the knockback from the impact set him off-balance, I took a large step forward and drove Brock directly into his abdomen. Two overlapping impacts like a double-barrel going off echoed out from where I struck.

Crunch!

The air was yanked out of him and funneled into my gauntlet, while blood shot out of his back where an exit wound had formed from the sheer force of my blow. He rolled across the asphalt, and, before he could pick himself up off the ground, I strode over to where he lay. Then I swung my fist down at him and said:

“Punch.harder( )!”

ACTIVATING SCRIPT: Punch.harder( )!

My balloon-covered fist smashed into his head, knocking it into the ground, where it bounced back up just in time for the follow-up, which was further empowered by my Punch Multiply Passive:

REACTIVATING SCRIPT: Punch.harder( )!

ACTIVATING SCRIPT: Math.multiply(Punch)!

The impact not only exploded his skull, but the sheer velocity of the strike sent a wave of pressure into his entire body, crushing it against the asphalt which cratered around him as though a ten-ton weight had been dropped on top.

No sooner had the kill registered than an announcement came, and I realized that a persistent hum of wings had been coming from overhead this whole time.

WARNING!

GREAT GAME Agents are hunting the Players ‘Gambit’ and ‘Bee’ for cheating and rule-breaking!

All unaffiliated Players in the area shall evacuate the scene or face punishment!

The sword-and-shield Player, who’d been standing around dumbfounded for a moment, realized what was happening and quickly took off down a nearby alley.

Above, the thrum of countless wings altered as the passengers of the flying dung vessels began to glide down towards us. I looked up and saw that there were easily forty in total, but all of them looked smaller and weaker than the ones I’d fought prior.

“At last, the countless children of the Agents you’ve killed have come to collect your head,” Panda mused.

“Meow,” replied Lordie, just as they all let loose with a storm of flechettes.

“Beetle Brawn!” Bee said, and her fuzzy soft-looking ‘fur’ turned into hardened scales, which not a single of the corkscrew projectiles could penetrate.

The majority were aimed at me, but the Corrupted Barrier was still in effect, sending every projectile bouncing in a random direction. Many of them triggered my Reflective Shell, for some reason, and returned the flechettes with enough oomph to knock several of the gliding Agents out of the air. Some of the reflected projectiles damaged only their wings, inducing downward spirals that left them smashing against the unforgiving ground.

Bee shared an appraisal of one of the Agents with me and said, “They’re all the same level!”

Level 20

‘Bl-bobt-nglt’

Agent x

“You killed my father, prepare to die, you vile Glitch!”

Job: GREAT GAME Agent-in-Training

Affiliation: Rule-Enforcement and Probing Department

This is an Agent-in-Training. The Beetles of the REPD take their role in the GREAT GAME quite seriously, and this manifests itself as the fact that their many children are often trained to become Agents from an early age.

Although this sort of ‘keep it in the family’ attitude always backfires, when oaths of vengeance are sworn against those Players in the GREAT GAME, who inevitably manage to kill an Agent. It’s quite disruptive towards the rules they are meant to uphold, but the viewers find it an amusing trope every season, so no one has deemed it necessary to fix this glaring issue.

She hates you for killing her father.

By the time that the Agents started to realize that shooting me was doing more harm to themselves, Bee and I had managed to knock half of them out of the air. Those that struck the asphalt didn’t all die, though they were left in pretty horrid states of agony.

“Moth Missile!” Bee exclaimed, sending four orbs into the air, all of which picked their own individual targets.

Each hit sent an Agent-in-Training plummeting to the street, while I contributed with Air Blasts that didn’t directly damage them at this distance, but did knock them into each other and tangling their wings together.

The bubble on my body finally burst apart, but it had more than served its purpose by now.

gasm.org Deactivated!

Ability Returned: Corrupted Barrier

Original Player: Logan Maximillian

“I’m running low on Mana,” Bee told me a second later, as she switched to Beetle Bolts to save her resources. The impacts from these didn’t deal anywhere near the same damage as her Missile, with the Agents able to shrug them off.

“Gambit!” Panda then yelled, trying to get my attention. “Behind you!”

I just managed to spin around in time to see a very-much-alive Logan driving his serpentine sword right towards my crotch.

“Honk!” I said at the very last moment, before he could take my third-most-favorite body part away from me.

SKILL TRIGGER!

Swan-feather Cloak’s ‘Indestructible’ Skill Activated!

Somewhere, a Swan takes notice of your power.

My Swan-feather Cloak instantly curled around my body and I didn’t even feel the moment that Logan’s sword struck me. I was wrapped inside a soft cocoon of white feathers for several more seconds afterwards, which made me wonder if I’d misunderstood the ability’s description.

All the outside sounds were muffled, but I got the sense that Bee was yelling something.

“Logan ran off,” Panda told me, his voice the only thing cutting through to me.

When the Cloak finally released its hold, I saw that many Agents-in-Training lay dead around us, though several were still writhing in pain from surviving their falls from up high. The ones who were still uninjured had retreated to their flying dung balls and were taking off.

I spun around, confused.

“Where’s Logan!?”

The spot where I’d crushed him into the asphalt only had a splatter of maggot-filled blood left behind. I saw his beacon in the distance, noticing Bee trailing it from the sky, and immediately began running towards it. But, after only a couple steps I could tell that the Concoction was still in my system, slowing me down significantly.

“Skater Boy!” I exclaimed, trying to summon up my longboard.

“Still on cooldown,” Panda said. “8 more minutes remaining.”

“Fuck!”

Bee, noticing that I was slow to catch up, spun around in the air, while dodging return fire from Logan. She flew low to the ground and reached her arms out for me.

I linked my arms in hers and let her half-drag me across the asphalt, her wings moving as fast as they could, as we resumed the chase.