MADMAN APOCALYPSE

The webcam screen still connected to Bee showed her flying after the fleeing Unicorn, as it galloped down the street and dodged abandoned cars. All the while she was yelling into my ears through the webcam feed with a sound that hit me with the unforgettably-garbled quality of an Xbox 360 headset mic:

[Stop running horsey!!]

“Since when was Bee a horse girl?” I asked Panda.

“No idea, but you’d better follow her,” he advised.

I took a few steps back from the edge of the roof, then ran forward and leapt to the next building across the street, all while trying to gauge which direction the Unicorn and Bee were heading in, based on the webcam feed and the Manhunter Badge still locked onto her.

As it ran, the horned horse lifted its tail and a puff of rainbow smoke came out. The smoke immediately altered the street, turning the asphalt into black quicksand and the lampposts into massive rainbow-colored garden eels, which immediately began reaching up for the flying Moth Magician with their mouths.

“Woah,” I muttered, as I leapt across another gap. “Fart magic.”

After I jumped to the next roof and went over to the edge, I came within view of the street with the Unicorn and flying Moth following it. She was twenty feet behind in the air and closing steadily.

[Pspspsp!!] Bee’s voice said, its grating quality hurting my ears worse than the Eldritch note of the Conspiracy Whistle.

“It’s not a cat!” I yelled to her.

“Meow?”

“Ah, you’re right.”

“What did he say?” Panda asked me.

“He said, ‘Maybe pspspsp works on unicorns’.”

“I can’t figure out if you’re making it up or are an actual hand-spider whisperer…”

Drawn either by the sound of hooves or Bee’s insistent cat-calling, a group of three Players came out of an alleyway between two apartment blocks. They positioned themselves between the abandoned trucks and cars that filled the street, barring the Unicorn’s path.

It neighed loudly and lowered its twirled horn, preparing to ram.

One of the Players carried a large plywood door as a shield and hammered it into the ground, while casting some kind of fortifying spell. The surface of his door-shield glistened as though covered in a fresh layer of oil, while his teammates prepared their own weapons.

The Unicorn rammed straight into the door, piercing it with its horn and impaling the Player, but the collision still managed to send it into a full-body flip that had it slamming onto its back. As it hit the asphalt, it crushed the Archer who’d been using the Shield guy for cover.

The remaining Player desperately began whacking the horse with two curved daggers, but the Unicorn’s hide repelled each blow, as though it was Stab-resistant Kevlar.

[Hey that’s mine!!] Bee exclaimed in outrage, swooping down towards the overturned animal, which was wriggling its legs and body to try and get back upright.

One of the dagger-wielding Player’s weapons finally managed to dig into its hide and draw blood, but in response the Unicorn released a cloud of rainbow smoke that altered the surroundings and covered him in purple flames.

He began to scream loudly and Bee halted her approach, remaining airborne while releasing Moth Missiles that struck the World Boss, but seemed to have little effect. The abandoned trucks were also touched by the smoke, turning into enormous pufferfish on wheels, with the asphalt below becoming beach sand.

“The Appraisal said it used ‘illusions’ right?” Panda asked. “Seems pretty real to me.”

“I’m more confused about why Bee is trying to kill it. I thought she wanted to catch it.”

The Moth Magician was continuing to blast away with her magic, even tossing a Beetle Bomb down at it.

“It seems resistant to magic,” Panda remarked.

“Guess it’s my turn then,” I replied.

I was on the roof of a five-story building and the Unicorn was on the street below, giving me a pretty clear shot. Exhaling slowly, I formed my right hand into a fist, making Brock produce a little squeak, while also triggering the Sea Urchin Ring. As my arm was covered in a shell full of spikes, I was already mid-sprint across the roof, building up momentum.

With a powerful kick off from the ground, I leapt into the air and plummeted straight down towards the Unicorn that lay belly-up, presenting a perfect target. My fist was cocked back and ready to deliver devastation.

“Gambit! Use your wings!” Panda yelled as I fell like a human-shaped missile. “Use them!”

Just as I was about to come within reach, I flung my arm forward, attaining a perfect Superman pose, before shouting, “Punch.spinTheWheel( )!”

The very tip of an Urchin spike protruding from the middle-finger knuckle of the yellow balloon gauntlet touched the exposed belly of the Unicorn, when time froze with a pulse of golden energy radiating out from my fist. I could tell that everyone else could see what was happening, as their eyes were flicking around, but they couldn’t move their bodies. I was likewise stuck, hanging mid-air and slowly coming to the realization that as soon as time resumed I’d break quite a few bones in my body.

Panda was the only one not affected by the time-freeze, as he walked from my shoulder and onto the top of my head, where he sat down.

Then a massive lottery wheel came down from above, as though lowered from a crane somewhere out of sight. An Announcer-type voice then filled the air, but it wasn’t Jeza the Wasp this time, but rather a male TV Presenter with way too much enthusiasm in his voice and a slight Tennessee twang.

Hello everybody watching at home!

We’ve got quite an exciting show for you today!

Player ‘Gambit’ has triggered a Lottery ability and now has to test his fortune against Lady Luck!

And let me tell you, she’s a fickle mistress, unless you’ve got yourself a Greed Demon tweaking the odds!

*Audience laughter*

“Where’s that coming from?” Panda asked, looking around.

My eyes could only look at the golden wheel divided into triangles by three black lines each bisecting it. At the top was a black flipper, which would serve to slow down the wheel’s rotation by hitting the pegs of each triangle, while also picking the result. There was no text, symbols, or anything on the wheel yet.

We have six potential outcomes of his Lottery ability and they are as follows:

Loot Piñata

Jelly Bones

10x Damage

Arney the Tickler

The Power of Friendship

Demon Incursion

As each potential outcome was listed, the word appeared on a triangle in either Green or Red text.

“I wonder what ‘Arney the Tickler’ does,” Panda said.

I know a lot of y’all are excited for the last option!

*Howls and screams*

Now then, are you ready to SPIN THAT WHEEL!?

There was a pause, and I looked around, wondering what they were waiting for, until realizing I could use my mouth again.

“Err, yes, Spin the wheel.”

Is that the best you can do, ‘Gambit’?

Let’s hear it again, but this time with gusto!

“SPIN THAT WHEEL!!” I yelled.

Immediately the golden wheel began to pick up speed, turning so quickly that the text became one solid blur of yellow, as the red and green blended together. The sound was like the propeller of a plane, but within moments the plastic slap of the flipper overshadowed the spinning sound and the wheel began to visibly slow.

“Come on, Loot Piñata!” Panda exclaimed, pumping his fingerless arms excitedly.

As the wheel slowed, it rolled past ‘10x Damage’, then ‘Arney the Tickler’, before almost skipping ‘The Power of Friendship’ but stopping just short of ‘Demon Incursion’.

The result is:

‘The Power of Friendship’!

I know many of you were sad that a portal to one of the Nine Demonic Realms wasn’t opened, but better luck next time!

As for the effect, here is what it does:

‘Multiplies the damage of your attack by the number of friends who are with you’

By our calculations, that number is 3, which means ‘Gambit’ will deal 3x extra damage!

“Three?” Panda asked, trying to do the math. “I guess they didn’t include me, but it would seem that they are counting Lordie, Bee, and Brock. Strange that they would count inanimate objects.”

The wheel slowly lifted into the air before disappearing from sight.

Then time resumed.

“Friendship Powah!!” Brock squealed as my punch connected.

Here's how all spins of Punch.spinTheWheel( ) are decided:

link to the image that determined today's outcome

The website is called "wheel of names"

Since this is an RNG-based ability, I don't want it to seem like a "I can steer the direction of the narrative by picking the best option" plot device, since that would go against the spirit of the ability. So far, the ability has been used 3 times in the story up to the point where Patreon is at, and every time I have used the first result it lands on, and I will continue to do so. This, in a way, also provides a pretty fun writing prompt for me, in a way, as I then have to adapt the story around whatever the outcome is, though none of them will be things that majorly alter the trajectory of the story.