Ravensdagger_Kittypunk_Cyberpunk_Kitrpg

Chapter Thirty — Chosen of the Eidolons at Play

Chapter Thirty — Chosen of the Eidolons at Play The bear warlock moved out of the room while the others were still plotting and planning. He timed his exit to coincide with a pair of cultists walking past. It was probably for the best, because while the cultists were mind-addled and clearly confused, it was entirely possible that they'd notice the warlocks and raise the alarm.The warlock ran out, grabbed a man by the head, and proceeded to smash said head into the far wall with enough force to leave a bloody smear behind. The second started to shout, but a swift mule kick sent the cultist stumbling into the room we were all in.The others jumped on him, and a dozen kicks and a few stomps beat him into silence.The two cult members had guns and knives. Those were quickly reappropriated and shared between the warlocks.I was happy to see that even though they were all working for different eidolons, they were all willing to work together to get out of here."Let's go!" the fox warlock said. He slipped out of the room. The others followed, with varying levels of enthusiasm. Alyssa was the last one out, which might have been for the best. The warlock just before her ate a trio of bullets to the chest and crashed down onto the ground, very much dead."Things are going to be loud here," I warned. "If Jenny has any plans for a distraction, now would be the time to set them off.""I'll let her know!" Sharp said.I hopped up and scampered after the warlocks. If it were possible, I would have warned them about the blocked stairwell, but there was no real way to do that, so I followed behind them as they stared down the corridor.The cultists here were all armed. They were also still lethargic and sloppy. Most had machine-pistols, and I suspected that whomever was organising all of this preferred that kind of weapon because the high rate of fire at least gave them a vague chance of hitting something.The warlocks flung spells forwards. Balls of laughing fire, a few concussive blasts. The woman that had summoned those yellow flowers cast something that summoned... a flight of small canaries. They shot forwards, leaving glowing trails behind them before they crashed into some cultists and started to tear into their flesh in a very un-canary like way.Alyssa had picked a gun off of a corpse and was taking potshots at anyone sticking their head out. It turned the corridor into a loud echo-chamber, the cracks of gunfire reverberating through the entire place and likely carrying to the floors above and below.There was no chance that we weren't going to be noticed.So I did the smart thing and kept to the corners and moved from corpse to corpse, body held low in case a stray bullet came my way.One of the cultists flung a grenade our way, but it was batted back out of the air by a quickly muttered spell.The explosion had my ears folding back and made my bones rattle. It also shut down half the lights in the corridor.At least it had stunned the cultists more than anything.The warlocks made it to the stairwell, kicked the door open, and stomped in... only to discover the blocked stairwell. "Anyone got anything for that?" the bear warlock asked."Not tired as I am," canary-woman said.The bear-man looked at Alyssa, but she just shook her head, as did fox-boy and the others. "Well, let's keep moving. The elevators still work.""Unless you've got great hacking skills, I wouldn't trust it," canary-woman said. "It could be shut down with the lot of us in it, and then we're all screwed. There has to be another stairwell down.""The windows?" one of them asked."I can fly, you lot can't," the canary warlock said, and that was the end of that particular idea.They filled out of the stairwell, took a few more shots to keep any cultist heads down, then started running. They were halfway down the corridor with me trailing after them when the elevator dinged open and a dozen cultists stumbled out.There was a bloody gunfight. I spent most of it sensibly using some poor idiot's corpse as a meatshield. "How are things on your end?" I asked. Things weren't progressing well here, and I was hoping for some good news."Jenny has a rocket launcher," Sharp said.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.I blinked. That... was not the kind of good news I was hoping for. "What do you mean, she has a rocket launcher?"I heard it a second later. A distant screaming whistle, then the entire building shook. I heard faint screams from afar, even over the spellfire and gunshots.Well, that would serve as a half-decent distraction, assuming she had more than one rocket. It would also call down a lot of attention on Sharp's head. "It might be best to back up," I said."I don't think I can! Jenny gave me a gun and she told me to shoot. I don't know how to use guns!"I was about to scold her when the floor shook under me. I stuck my head out and blinked as a wash of dust passed me by. When it cleared, there was a massive hole in the floor revealed. Bear-guy was below. His arms glowing a bright green. He was covered in blood, and it looked like he had been shot in the chest a few times, but that wasn't keeping him down. Had he just blown out the floor?The other warlocks, those that were left, moved to the edge of the hole and pushed themselves down, some with more acrobatic finesse than the others. Alyssa paused, sitting on the edge of the hole, and glanced back my way.Sighing, I darted out from behind the corpse and ran over to leap into her arms. She slid down and crashed to the floor a moment later.There were more cultists, but they seemed still unaware and very much unprepared for a drawn out gunfight. The warlocks made short work of the few that stood out, then there was a charge back to the stairwell.It wasn't blocked on this level, and the group was soon stretched out in the stairwell as the faster ones ran down the stairs and the slower ones stumbled after them.Alyssa dropped me down after a few flights. I was mostly just happy that I didn't need to walk all the way down by myself.On reaching the ground floor, we found ourselves in a charnel house. Cultist bodies were scattered across the floor. The front entrance was a smoking wreck, and the bear warlock was off to one side, roaring psychotically as he beat a corpse up with its own arm.I decided not to interrupt. Instead I kept close to Alyssa as she stumbled forwards towards the exit. "We're almost out!""G-got it!" Sharp shouted back.The moment we were out Jenny's van came rushing out towards us. It stopped with a screech. "Aly! Get in!" Jenny shouted as she rolled the window down. The back door was slid open revealing a wide-eyed, dishevelled Sharp holding onto an assault rifle. "G-get in!" she said.Alyssa stumbled into the van, then fell to the ground. I hopped in after her, then turned to look out.Sharp, grabbing the gun in exactly the right way if her goal was to break her wrist, opened fire in the general direction of some cultists pushing out of the blown out entrance. She missed every shot, but it was enough to make the smarter cultists dive for cover."Hang on!" Jenny shouted.I was almost thrown across the floor as she gunned in. Sharp struggled to slam the door shut, then threw herself down as a scattering of gunfire smashed through the backdoor and over our heads.We were around a corner and relatively safe a few moments later."Aly! Aly, are you good?" Jenny asked."I feel like run-over shit," Aly said from the floor. "But I'm alive, and the moth isn't too pissed at me."Jenny just laughed, uproarious and happy. I suspected that she was close to tears, which didn't bode well when she was the one driving."Are you okay?" Sharp asked as she plucked me off the floor and placed me on her lap."I'm fine," I said. "But we might not be if we stick around with these two for too much longer. I don't need their questioning.""Right," Sharp said. "You did really well in there."I huffed. "Obviously. I'm an expert. Given some time to actually plot and plan it wouldn't have been half as messy, of course."Sharp grinned. "Of course!" she said.Then both of us gasped as we were suddenly hit by a wave of notifications.Anima Has Levelled Up!Anima 1 2Body Has Levelled Up!Body 1 2Cat Has Levelled Up!Cat 3 4Combat Has Levelled Up!Combat 2 3Magic Has Levelled Up!Magic 1 2

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Chapter Thirty-One — Running to a Home

Chapter Thirty-One — Running to a Home "Y-you can let us out here," Sharp said.Jenny didn't let up on the pedal, and we roared past one of the main entrances into Fenway. I sat up a little straighter, having relocated myself to Sharp's arms... or more accurately, having allowed her to grab a hold of me. She was hugging me close, so it saved me from bumping around too much as Jenny climbed her van onto the curbside and continued to rush forwards past the usual traffic."J-Jenny?" Sharp asked."We're going to Allston," Jenny said."Jen," Alyssa said. She was still plastered onto the floor of the van. "Just take us home.""Fuck that," Jenny said. "They saw your face. Bet they saw my van. They can trace us back with nothing more than a two-bit netrunner. Home ain't safe, and you need a medic.""I don't," Alyssa said. She groaned as Jenny took another sharp turn, honking as she wove through a busy intersection. Sharp shifted to the side as Alyssa vomited across the floor of the van. Fortunately, it seemed as though she didn't have much to vomit. It was mostly wet bile."You can let us out here," Sharp said again, gesturing to a four-way up ahead. Technically we were in Brookline now, having cut through the lower edge of Fenway. We weren't in the more... posh and well-protected areas of Brookline, however. Rather, we were on one of the suspended highways over the nicer parts of that district.Jenny shot past the intersection without a look back. "We're going to my doc," she said.Alyssa's response was an ugly groan."Stop complaining. You're injured. Injured people should shut up and let their docs fix them up." Jenny was blinking quickly, and the look on her face as I caught it in the rearview was far from pretty. She sniffed, but her eyes were steel.I glanced up at Sharp. She was a little concerned, obviously, but not on the verge of panic or anything. To be fair, there was little reason to be. Jenny was doing a somewhat sensible thing dragging her friend in for medical attention. Stopping to drop us off might lose some precious minutes."It's just... it's just magic sickness," Alyssa said. She pulled herself up, and Sharp set me down on the seat next to her to help Alyssa sit up straighter. "It'll pass.""Last time you had magic sickness you were down for three days and you didn't look half as bad as this," Jenny snapped. "And you were in a cage, I saw it. Did they stick you with anything? Were you drugged or something?" Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Did they touch you? I'll fucking kill them all.""Nothing like that," Alyssa said. She slumped back into the seat Sharp helped her into and just closed her eyes for a moment. Sharp stared for a moment, but didn't say anything. It was kind of irritating how Alyssa managed to still be attractive, even with her hair in total disarray and her face so pale it was clear she was ill.A bit of a distraction couldn't hurt. "Did you gain a lot of skills all of a sudden, Sharp?" I asked."Hmm? Oh, yeah," Sharp said. She picked me up again and brought her head close to my ears. With the sound of traffic, there was a good chance Alyssa wouldn't overhear much. "My Combat went up one, so did Protagonist and Tech."Not the same set of increases as me, which I supposed wasn't that surprising. There were only three skill ups compared to my four, which was also not too strange. I'd been in the middle of the fighting whereas Sharp was more tangentially caught up in it. Any amount of increase was good, though.We were both reaching the point where we had skills close to level five. If the pattern held, that would be when we finally got some more of those Perks that Sharp had mentioned. Her one perk so far had summoned me, and I liked to think that it meant that the perk was relatively strong.Hopefully, that pattern of strength and utility would hold and all of the perks we'd gain would be just as strong and useful.Squinting, I dragged out the skill list, just to see where I was sitting at the moment.Anima 2Body 2Cat 4Combat 3Cool 1Magic 2Reflex 2Tech 2That was... a fair bit of improvement, but the only skill actually close to that perk rank was Cat, the skill I perhaps cared about the least. Combat being a close second was actually kind of nice. I was looking forward to that, but at the same time, levelling combat required being in combat, and that meant being in a degree of danger that I wasn't comfortable with.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.I was knocked out of my thinking as Jenny took a turn far too sharply. "Get the fuck outta the way!" she shouted at some people diving off the road. We'd taken an off-ramp and were now in a busier part of the city, surrounded on all sides by older warehouses and shops and tenement buildings.Jenny had punched the dash a few times, shutting up the device tallying up all of her tickets.Jenny drove the van into an open garage door in what looked like a large repurposed factory. The walls were covered in glowing graffiti, most of the art showing people dancing or animals or musical notes. The van shut down, and Jenny leapt out of the driver's side. The moment the door opened, I caught some heavy electronic beats coming from just outside.The side door opened, and Jenny came face-to-face with Sharp and I. "Oh, right, you and the cat. Uh. Just stand off to the side. I'll take care of you later."Sharp scrambled out of the van and I leapt up and onto her shoulders.This was a gang hideout if I ever saw one. The DJs, if I had to guess. I didn't know much about this group, except that they were small and kind of wild.The men and women around here were dressed... almost normally. There was a lot of tracksuit-chic and graphic-tees covered in bright neon artwork. Half the people I saw here had glowing tattoos as well.A man came over just as Jenny was helping Alyssa out of the van. A shorter man, in an orange coat not too dissimilar from the bright yellow jacket that Jenny was wearing. "Didn't think I'd ever be seeing you again, Jenkins," the man said.Jenny froze up, then half-turned to give the man a glare. "I need to chat with the old fox," she said."Your friend shot up?" he asked. He wasn't giving ground, and there was a certain tension in the entire room. Lots of folk just sitting back and watching, but guns were close at hand.I really didn't want to be here."She... we got tangled up with that cult of freaks in South Boston. They did some magical shit and Aly got caught in it. She needs a doc."The man stood his ground for a few moments more, then he nodded. "Fine," he said. "Get her in the back. Fox will give her a look, but it'll cost you, in explanations to begin with."Jenny worked her jaw, but nodded before shifting her hold on Alyssa. "Yeah, alright. Thanks," she said."Once family, always," he said. Then he turned his gaze onto Sharp and I, though I only got a spare look. "Who's this one?""She's a solo that helped us," Jenny said. "Sharp, grab Aly's other side. You can skip on out of here after.""Oh, uh, okay," Sharp said as she scrambled to help. I leapt off her shoulder and landed by their feet. The ground was disgustingly humid, but I decided to reserve my complaining for the moment.Jenny knew where to go, so we just followed along. I had questions, but no way to ask them, and Sharp didn't seem in a very communicative mood. Not that I blamed her. It was a long, tiring day. She was due to go to bed, not to be out here messing around.Maybe we could take an autocab back to Fenway? Though it would cost a small fortune."You got an account on the Solonet?" Jenny asked."The what?" Sharp asked."Fuck," Jenny said. "Set one up and ping me your code, I'll give you credit for a gig completed. You... did pretty alright tonight. Might not have been able to save Aly without you, so as far as I'm concerned, I owe you one, yeah?""Okay," Sharp said. Then she looked down to me, and muttered a question that Jenny might have heard but which was definitely aimed at me. "What the heck is a Solonet?"Right, of course some random orphan wouldn't know. And of course it would fall on me to answer the question.I sighed. Time to explain to Sharp how to accomplish her dream, I supposed, though it brought me no pleasure to have to do the explaining, or having her know in the first place.

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