Chương 80: Vive la France, Vive la Paris!

[Emergency quest: Save Paris] Assumed difficulty: Lvl 30+, 4, 220+ Custodians Primary objective: Save Paris. It's that simple. Reward: Variable. The eternal gratitude of the people of Paris. Croissants, likely. I sure hope Addy isn't out there in this mess. Oh who am I kidding, she's likely knee-deep in the guts of some robot. No matter how much I wanted to see her, I had to put any thoughts of her out of my mind.

They were distracting, and at this moment there was no guarantee that we were even on the same continent. That aside, I was currently being convinced with 1200 persuasive arguments per minute heading our way that if there ever was a time to focus on the present, it was now. A pop-up turret on the upper leg of the skyscraper-sized squid robot whirred to face us, the one-mile distance not stopping it from unloading a stream of high velocity rounds with terrible precision.

The blue projectiles closed the distance in split seconds, crackling against Pol's shield dome and making it flicker.

"Cover, over there!" I yelled, grabbing a shocked Parsnip and tossing her behind a cream-colored limestone city block, before hauling my spidery butt after her. Becca did the same with Orianna, who had nearly gotten to level 30 without anything but simulated dollhouse battles and study. Silica was quick to follow while covering our flanks, implying at least some level of military experience, while Pol stayed in the shield until the very last moment. As he left, the already failing shield popped entirely.

He shrieked an alien curse as a streak of blue energy cut through his left wing membrane. I watched the teleporter box catch blue fire before it teleported away.

"Crap, they're spawncamping us — alright people, looks like reinforcements might take a bit to get here."

"W-we're on our own?" Orianna asked." Already?"

"War is unpredictable and unglamorous," Parsnip said.

"It is no dancing occasion. But I shall dance regardless, out of spite." Her unusual calm was belying a tenseness and rigidity hidden beneath her chitin, and the fur-padded steel chestplate Silica had sponsored her. The armor was magical, but even then it wouldn't hold up to too many murderbot plasma shots. At least Parsnip was learning the value of armor.

"I've been in worse situations." Not many, but being hunted by a wizard felt worse by an order of magnitude.

"First off, supplies. Here's some dogwatah, three time-bandaids per person, and some pain-dampening chewing gum. Also, a throwaway shield-bubble belt, for emergencies." Orianna stared at the pile of things that materialized out of nowhere, jaw slack.

"That is… how many soulcoins do you even have?" [Soulcoins: 2014->176] I glanced at the number.

"Enough." The shield-bubble belt was the most expensive piece of gear, easily over 1. 400 Soulcoins for the six of us. It was just a leather belt, but studded with fat half-pearls in every direction that created a visible translucent shield around the wearer when tapped thrice. The shield bubble could be turned on and off, so you could save power that way. However, for every bit of damage incurred, one or more of the pearls cracked.

When all were cracked, the shield-bubble belt was only good for holding your pants in place. I was reminded again of the dynamic of magical power. It was expensive to heal something that was broken, slightly less expensive to prevent injury in the first place, and cheapest to just take out the threat before it could inflict any damage. With this, I'd invested a considerable amount into preventing a lucky shot from taking anyone out immediately.

There was nothing available in the shop catalogue that could safely take out the kaiju, not for two thousand soulcoins, not for five. Even if the tiny nuke I'd used on the mimic factory worm in Creektin weren't completely out of stock, detonating that in the middle of Paris was a less than intelligent idea. A couple figures had begun flitting around the Kaiju like flies. Their irregular pathing and emotional aura revealed them as Custodians. They appeared as above levels 50 and 60 on my minimap.

In dodging the streaks of point-defense machinegun lasers, the highest level Custodian flew too close in front of one of many baleful blue eyes. There was a flash, a resounding crack like the mother of all whips. The laser from the eye completely evaporated the Custodian, melting the road behind as it traveled up and cut at the Eiffel tower. The tower's tip listed, then slowly fell off, like a candle melted in half.

"Land p-preserve us," Silica muttered.

"I-I don't have a s-shield big or s-strong enough for that."

"A direct approach leads to certain death," Parsnip said, mandibles slack. The other flying Custodians scattered, taking cover behind highrises and city blocks. Not that they would stop the laser, but they helped in obfuscating where they would pop up next. Maybe they would nickle-and-dime the thing to death, eventually. But the death toll would be hideous. Those buildings are still full of people. We needed to be smart about this, and fast.

But while I had the Mind, I spent the better part of the last three months away from books, academic learning, and the internet. I turned to my robotic slime-friend. She was busy staring at her left hand as it slowly morphed into a heavy laser gun.

"Becca." She raised her gaze.

"What do you know about murderbots?" She paused.

"They're a self-proliferating weapon. They've been fighting wars, optimizing neural networks, material sciences, and weapons technology for centuries. Lasers, tough armor, stealth technology, and even teleportation, they've got it all. They're slow to adapt, but they don't need to be fast to win. They've got a whole planet dedicated to pumping out war bots, and they damn well want a second."

"Uplifting news as always," I said with a grin.

"Don't they have any fun hobbies?

"They enjoy causing fear. And using it to fuel their renewables."

"Becca, that's the opposite of fun."

"It's true though. This—" she jabbed at her battery backpack, "— is a magically compressed, n-dimensional battery, and it lasts anywhere from several weeks of normal output to ten minutes of moderate-intensity combat. It's heavy as shit, volatile, and still has barely enough charge for a couple dozen laser blasts. These things are starved for energy, and we're pretty sure they send captured enemies' souls back to their planet to harvest their emotions, matrix style." The group grew deathly quiet.

"... Becca, you're starting to make me channel fear."

"The good news is that, due to the strong concentration of fear emissions, it's near impossible for them to mass their forces without us noticing. Those forces that do make it to earth often fail to coordinate with their wider network. On their planet, we'd be fighting robots with continents dedicated to sharing cloud-based processing power. Here, they've gotta make do with their shitty onboard electronics. They're not poorly designed, and their software is unbeatable, but their cost cutting measures are…

I had to buy and eat a normal laptop for 300 bucks to get a better processor. A laptop! Do you know how shitty the tiny-ass, inbuilt processors on a commercial laptop are—""Becca, focus."

"I… right. The kaiju's reactions are impersonal, instinctive, almost accidental. They have to be so its central processor isn't overloaded with micromanaging every gyro and every swiveling turret. It'll be less like fighting one giant smart robot, and more like overcoming a dozen dumb systems working in tandem to cover each other."

Which meant that instead of fighting the system on its own terms and destroying the robot top to bottom, we just needed to take out one piece at a time, or break down communications between the individual parts, preferably before the main system took note of us. Easier said than done. Its important bits were likely all stuck in that giant metal dome standing on its 500-feet stilts for legs. Maybe kneecapping it would be easier — except, what happens when it falls on a giant apartment building?

Gah, urban fights are so annoying. I turned to my demon friend.

"Pol, what do you need to eat to make that barrier?"

"The stem, leaves, and roots of 100-year volcano root." An alchemical ingredient, or so the system claimed, and not a cheap one. [Price: 50 Soulcoins] The shield doesn't move, but he can cover multiple people. Maybe if we sneak our way to a leg I can run up and blow a joint. Maybe with enough explosives—"Sam," Becca said in a sultry, robotic voice.

"Are you planning to blow yourself up again?

"I, uh, n-no." I could practically imagine the smile on her face behind her impassive CCTV head.

"I'm a mimic, you know. I eat metal for breakfast. It takes a while to digest, but I'm not any normal mimic. I level from eating new things, levels which give me more Body, which allows me to eat faster. Get me past its half-foot of layered armor, and I'll… hopefully give it more than a stomach ache. I blinked at her.

"Are you serious, you—""I'm level 21 now, imagine what level I'd be after eating a kaiju inside-out," she said.

"Even if you're still the strongest one among us by a mile, we've all got our specialties. Trust me, Sam. I can do it."

"She's as eager as she is reckless," Rico said, poking out of my knapsack.

"The same could be said about you. Are you going to deny her because of that? You wouldn't want to be a hypocrite, would you?"

"I… dammit, alright, fine. You have a point, she has a point, everyone has a point." I threw up my hands, but inside I was grinning. Even after everything I'd done, I wasn't alone. With friends like these, the puzzle pieces started falling together all on their own.

"Alright people, following plan…" +++ The closer we got to the kaiju, the more the chaos became personal. Melted roads, burnt out cars, and flaming trees greeted us on our way in, blocking the path and filling the air with biting smells. Every now and then, we came across a human-shaped shadow burnt into the walls. Thoughts on the horrors that had played out here in the short time the alien bots had been present were quickly replaced by first-hand impressions of more than just a couple squads of murderbots.

Because of course the big guy wasn't left completely undefended. I twirled my Lucky-7, saving its special ammo for equally special enemy types, and fired suppressive Prickler-fire with several arms. All the while we ran past burnt-out and burning husks. I catalogued them to refresh old facts and memories. They had drones. So many drones.

They ranged from hand-sized drones in the shape of shurikens that barely registered as they bounced off of our shields to large, three-foot-diameter ones that could cut through a steel lamppost with their saw-like outer rim, and still catch themselves for a return journey. Those were annoying, and plentiful, but hiding behind Pol's shield every couple blocks and clearing the area of them until they stopped bothering to show up worked fine for us.

The shield held well against drones hurling themselves against, but less so against laser fire. Basic grunts 'only' had a simple single-shot laser with an effective range of around three hundred yards. Their commanders weren't much better, but they could fire roughly twice as fast, had a smoke-launcher that fired obfuscating smoke which they could still see through, and were armored enough to resist some level of small arms fire.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Then came their specialists. There were spindly, skeletal creatures walking on short legs and knuckled arms. They reminded me of a gorilla, except with a variety of mortar tubes, recoilless rifles, or in one case a twenty-shot fragmentary missile pod strapped to their backs. <<gimme, >> my robotic left arm messaged me. <<gimme gimme>>"Sin, now isn't the time for — ack!"

The arm yoinked me towards the missile pod and yoinked it with a shot of string, digging into it with frankly unnerving glee. I watched in astonishment and real-time as the pod's case reformed, reshaping until it had what looked like a clamp in the back, and a vertical grip in the front. The clamp closed around my shoulder, and suddenly a small aiming reticle popped up in my view. Missile pod: acquired.

"I… am not against this." <<more gun more fun>> <<I'm a good turret, yes yes>> There were few words that could express the joy of looking at something and having three or four unguided missiles obliterate it shortly thereafter. Personally, I would have used the word 'awesome' if I didn't have to be incredibly careful with it. A pair of rolling, ball-shaped droideka knockoffs came hurtling around a corner shortly after.

I didn't bother finding out what they could do, as Orianna picked them off the ground with her orbikinesis before crunching them together into a single, bigger orb. Then she used that orb to bash bots into bits and bytes, face somewhere between manic laughter and snotty ugly-crying. The ball was now roughly the size of two SUVs, and still growing.

"Look at you," I said, one moment passing during which I evaded a sniper shot and returned fire with an explosive Lucky 7 bullet.

"Your build's growing into its own. And you've got all the emotional charge you need to roll this thing around. Isn't that just great?" She turned to me with tear-streaked eyes.

"We are all going to die!"

"Don't be such a baby, we've got plenty of cover." Paris had, compared to cities like New York, Chicago, or London, a dearth of high-rises. They were clustered in a business district to the northwest of the now stunted Eiffel Tower. The glass-covered skyscrapers must have reflected the light at the giant robot in a particularly annoying way. That, or kaiju were naturally drawn to the biggest buildings around the same way kids were drawn to tall sandcastles.

The facade of one building exploded as the kaiju robot wrapped a mechanical tendril around it, showering us in glass even a quarter mile out. Blue globs of plasma fire followed in streaks, aimed at a buzzing Custodian flying circles around the thing while shooting it with much too small bombs in the shape of pink bats. One glob streaked across an apartment, melting stone with a hiss. Out of the corner of an eye, I caught movement inside. <<Parsnip, damage control! >>"Ack!"

Parsnip tried to wave the system interface out of her face.

"Sam, the words are talking to me again. They're being quite pushy."

"Parsnip!" With a leap, she was already up there, getting people out of the line of fire — and out of the literal fire. Suddenly, there was a flash of red light, and the train-thick tentacle wrapped around a building was cut in two, falling away from us by sheer luck. Then the giant robot's head tilted, blue light shining from a dozen different points. Shit.

"Take cover!" I yelled. We were in the middle of crossing a wide open plaza. Nobody but me was fast enough to jump into cover immediately. But people still reacted. Orianna's ball was out in front, Pol was in the middle of summoning his shield — and then they hit. Small laser beams, big lasers beams, plasma globs as wide as a finger, an arm, a body. The air cracked and boomed, expanding faster than the speed of sound as the sudden heat influx expanded it within microseconds. Glass rained on us from all around.

When I could open my eyes again, the flagstones in front of me were bubbling, liquified. Orianna's ball was barely a child-sized dimple of molten slag on the plaza. Pol's shield was gone. He'd leaped from it, grabbing everyone nearby and zipping over into a subway station some steps behind it. He was singed all over. There was a hole in his stomach, a hole which I quickly patched with two time bandaids. Silica was gone. All that was left was her knapsack, which besides being covered in soot looked as fine as ever.

Then, seconds later, a hand emerged from it, an arm, a person.

"I-I couldn't p-pull anyone i-inside," Silica said, sweat matted on her forehead, but looking perfectly fine otherwise.

"S-sorry." I gave her a nod. Becca meanwhile was a pile of fused robot limbs. She dissolved into goo, and within moments had rebuilt her body in peak condition.

"Ori!" she shrieked. Because Orianna was only half with us, in an uncomfortably literal manner. She had no legs. Her hips were scorched. Her breathing was shallow and her gaze distant.

"I—" she sucked in a breath.

"I called it. Shit. I'm dying. I'm—" I emptied the regeneration potion in her mouth. Skin, bone, muscle regrew in moments, old dead cells flaking off like old carapace as she shivered like an electric eel wrapped around a powerline.

"O-oh," she said, staring breathlessly down at herself after the shaking was done.

"So that's what it feels like to be filthy rich."

"Try to control your balls from behind cover," I offered with a strained smile, before Becca pushed past me.

"Yes, you better," she said, grabbing Orianna's cheeks and forcing her to look her in the camera-eye.

"Because if you die, I'm going up there to drag you back down here. Is that clear, Queen of clubs?"

"Yesh, Queen," Orianna squeaked.

"Good girl," Becca said with all the dominance of someone wearing a garter belt and S&M straps. And proceeded to absolutely ruin the moment by trying to kiss Orianna as a robot. Her nose squished against Becca's camera, leaving a smudge. They both stared at each other, not saying anything for a while. Hah. What? Orianna and Becca are cute together? Good. Good! Not the time, but hey, I'm channeling some joy again. The giant Kaiju turned away as explosions on its east side captured its limited attention.

I breathed out, sitting on the cool stairs leading to the subway leading down to La Défense station. Becca was trying and failing to form a face, then just a mouth. She seemed so happy, so carefree, happy with herself in a way I knew all too well.

"We really are a bit too alike, you and I."

"Bitch, you're a lot nicer than me."

"Maybe, but not by much." I hung my head.

"I miss my girlfriend."

"Is this really the time for—" We were interrupted when a man with skin covered entirely in sparkling silver landed next to us with a thud. He grabbed the edge of the him-shaped crater, pulled himself out with sizzling metal hands, and summoned a full set of underwear, cargo pants, a Hawaiian shirt, and a straw hat. He was halfway through reclothing himself before he noticed us.

"You… are way too low level to be here," he surmised, seeming entirely unharmed, and unbothered by his temporary nudity.

"Except for you with all the eyes." I raised my chin.

"Trigger Happy, reporting for duty. Plus, err…" I glanced at Becca. [Rebecca, Hungry Hungry Mimic Queen, Lvl 21]"Honestly, just call her Rebecca. We've got a plan that might work to destroy the kaiju."

"You're the third person to make that claim," he said, stretching his shoulders, checking his range of mobility.

"Maybe you'll make good on it, maybe you won't. Either way, we don't have the sort of concentrated firepower to fight a kaiju blow-for-blow."

"You seemed quite fine after taking an apocalyptic number of lasers to the face," I posited. He rapped his forehead, his knuckles eliciting a solid metal sound.

"I've got [Mirror Skin], [Harden], and [Temperature control]. Hard counter to lasers and plasma. Downside is that I'm as stealthy as a disco ball in front of a search light. Can't deal much damage either by just punching the giant thing — it's too massive, and the laser lenses and metal legs are basically indestructible. If you manage to make a crack, it's got some sort of self-healing ability as well."

"How fast do its passive systems react?" Becca asked briskly.

"You got a recording?" He flicked something to her on his interface. Within seconds, Becca had parsed the video at x3 speed and come to a conclusion. <<It can't heal faster than I can eat, >> she said.

"The plan's still a go, then?" I realized after a moment that I'd said it out loud. I waved the silver guy's odd look away.

"We'll shoot our shot. Gonna take a minute to set up. Could you be a dear and distract it for a while?"

"Girl, that's my entire build," he said, flashing a dazzling smile. It only blinded me temporarily. When I blinked the dental hygiene flashbang away, he was already lifting off into the sky.

"Just remember to buy Disco Drew a drink once this is all over."

"What an odd character," I said.

"I'm just glad he put some clothes on," Becca muttered.

"Maybe his soulbound underwear is currently under repair? Could be that he got squished and died twice in a row."

"Means he would be suffering from the revive debuff as well," she said, watching the silver man turn into a streak that clobbered the kaiju straight across its optics.

"God, I hope this works." +++ Orianna, Pol, Silica, and Parsnip had already pulled a significant portion of the remaining murderbot escorts when I sprung into action. With a running start, and a bit of [Sticky], I ran straight up the side of the skyscraper closest to the kaiju. I was doing the running, two legs and six arms sticking to glass with ease, while Becca clung to me like a vest.

"You're not wearing Addy's vest."

"I… sorta, maybe put it in my backpack before I got yeeted off the side of the world, because I knew the pactmaker or one of the Fowl clones was going to find some way to use it against me."

"Glad that rat fucker isn't around anymore."

"He is," I said, causing my living vest to jolt.

"I met him in The Cauldron. Killed him too. Twice. He'll probably be better in a bit."

"How?"

"He can, uh, sort of revive like a lich?." I paused. Somewhere in the distance, someone yelled the words 'nega-cube!' loud enough that it shook through my bones.

"I think he's bitter that he couldn't become a Custodian. Tearing us down would be a way to prove himself. So much time and effort spent on negativity… it's sad, almost pitiable." My Becca-vest shivered.

"Unbelievable."

"What? What is it?"

"Nothing. Look, there's the roof." I flung us over and on top of a radiator. From here we had a good view of the saucer-shaped main body of the great fiend. Details visible in the distance only grew in complexity. I swore that I could see tiny drones flitting about it, welding metal plates here and there.

"The thing has its own mobile pit stop."

"What do you mean? Hey, Sam, my eyesight isn't nearly as good as yours."

"The downsides of mimic life." I eyed the thing, made sure none of the sensors had reason to prioritize their feeds on us. They could see us, definitely, but while we weren't moving the colossus had more important feeds to listen to.

"Ready?"

"I… am feeling many emotions right now, few of which are productive." She said it in a quiet voice, slowly turning into the shape of an olympic throwing spear. When she next spoke it was with a growl that had her metal body shivering in my hands.

"But I am going to tear it up cathode by anode, wafer by wafer, screw by screw. And then…"

"Victory, pie, cake, muffins!" I pinched my tongue between my teeth, took a running start, and activated [Arms & Arms proficiency] before tossing spear-becca at the last moment. She disappeared into the sky in an instant. Now, the yellow-glowing lines running up my arms were most definitely something the kaiju might take an interest in. Two gun turrets popped up, half a dozen of the maintenance drones being redirected in my direction. We're not done here yet. System, calculate Becca trajectory.

A red line appeared on my interface, terminating in a dot on the kaiju's armor. The armor was resilient enough that Becca might just slip off and fall before she could dig in. I had to make sure she had a point of entry. My trust in her ability, her resolve, fueled seven shots of my revolver. I imagined a metal plate, composite, ERA, electric and thermal padding, everything that could be used as a last line of defense. Then I imagined the bullets cutting through, erasing it. Out of seven shots, five hit their mark.

Of the five, three spouted holes. The lasers flying at Becca stopped as she got close enough to risk friendly fire between the turrets. Becca hit the holes then, and even as some ferrous liquid bubbled from them, she squeezed her thin body through a hole which a drone welded some goopy metal over seconds later. For a moment, I was worried that something had gone wrong. <<I'm in. >> My heart jumped. Then I jumped, a whizzing line of fist-sized plasma globules cutting through the air underneath me.

My skyscraper shuddered, then tilted forward as I ran down the side — and saw a pair of young women cowering underneath an office table. One of them had a piece of glass sticking out of her left thigh and couldn't move. At a glance, they were the only ones in the entire building who hadn't evacuated into the basement yet. Shit. I skidded to a halt, launched myself back up and through the window where I grabbed the two with two arms each.

They barely managed a surprised 'ah' and a squeak as I broke through another cubicle, then jumped outside, webbing a more stable looking building. The dustcloud of the first few floors compressing beneath me rose like a storm of stone and glass shards. They were screaming through the whole parabolic arc as I swung down, then swung back up, ending up on the next skyscraper. If I had stopped at the ground where my speed was highest, I would have broken an arm and turned them into paste.

I had to bleed off the energy first, and the best way to do that was to follow physics and simply rise up and up again. They weren't safe. But at least this building wasn't collapsing yet.

"Find the exit," I yanked the shard of glass out, slapped a bandaid on the wound, then gave her some dogwatah and pointed at the flickering exit sign.

"Go, go! I escorted them as best I could — a shuriken drone tried to slice them in half, but I shot it down. When we arrived downstairs, I sent them into the metro at speed. The system thought it was the safest place to be, and I didn't have a better idea. How many people died when that building collapsed? How many are dying every second? They ran down. Then they ran back up, screaming. I was seconds from filling the subway with lasers when I noticed why they'd ran back up.

It was the same stairwell to the metro that Silica, Pol, and Parsnip were hiding out in. Sheepishly, and hiding an inappropriate giggle, I shepherded them past the aliens with many muttered apologies and 'oui's'.

"I'm not that ugly," Pol grumped with a hissing, pained laugh.

"It's your t-teeth," Silica said.

"They're very well brushed."

"Also five inches long, and shaped like knives," I noted.

"Pop culture and survival instincts have told humans that sharp teeth are dangerous." I needed to go back. I needed to get people out of that rubble quickly. Forget rubble, the dust cloud alone was made of sharp rock and dusted glass, both small enough to get in and cut up the lungs of anyone who breathed it in. Ah, idea! I summoned illusory doubles until I was at my mental limit.

At 338 Mind, I could control 11 at most, leaving me to think that they required around 30 per double, probably less since my main body also needed some level of mental capacity to not just knock itself out. Eleven me's. More effective than one.

"Go out there. Find injured people. Get them back." They disappeared in a flash of limbs and eyes.

"I… thought those were supposed to be illusions," Orianna said.

"I got upgrades."

"I can see that." Her eyes drifted to my bicep.

"Friggin Body-builds. By your lack of swearing I'd say the plan is not a total failure?" I glanced up at the robot kaiju. It was still merrily staggering along, lasering things in its path.

"Becca, sitrep?" <<It's fucking dark in here. The thing's got an immune system. Nanobots are trying to eat me, but I just eat them back — I just leveled again. Wait, found something glowy. I wonder what that is? >> There was a distant explosion. I noticed a couple turret fixtures and a laser lens plummet from the kaiju. <<I'm fine. >>"So you're telling me you didn't just explode yourself?" I asked, much to Orianna's horror.

<<Well, no, but when you're as dense as I am, it gets really hard to do anything but surface level damage without literally dissolving me. Sure, I may have lost a few pounds of biomass, but I've made that back… now. Ooh, that battery was a lot better than the crap the grunts are walking around with. And the paths of these cables seem to be converging up ahead. I wonder… >> I turned to everyone.

"It's still a work in progress." The kaiju robot started to stagger, walking like it was drunk. Becca had that handled, probably, but as I turned around I noticed that we were not alone. Hundreds of murderbots were filling the streets, clambering over rubble, eyeing at me from debris-blasted rooftops. Even through the lingering dust cloud of a collapsed highrise their piercing blue eyes shone with malevolence. And atop a half-slagged human statue, there stood that motherflipping wizard.