04 - Stage 4

The sun was about to set.

“Three minutes,” I said.

I looked around. The three of us were alone. There were no signs of her.

Without making a noise, Irwin Laurentius Goodenough put his right knee on the floor and prepared his Obediah-KN Steam Launcher.

“Two minutes. Where is she?” I insisted.

I heard the sound of a new message, and checked it: I will be there soon, I had something important to do.

Nobody but me realized just how serious this was. Something “important.”

“There is nothing more important than being here on time!” I said out loud.

“One minute, forget about her,” said Phineas Julian Rayburn, as he turned on his clockwork machines. There was a turret—built first as always even though we had told him not to like a thousand times—a resupplier and a… was that a takoyaki stand?

I wanted to ask about it, but there was no time left. I closed my helmet and prepared to receive most of the attack.

“I, Mira Georgina Hopperton, as the leader of The Electric Pillagers, declare our victory in advance!”

The three of us had our backs against each other’s. We counted down the remaining few seconds in our minds.

Exactly at sunset, two shadow walkers appeared on the horizon, red shadow walkers to be specific. A steam-powered rocket passed next to me, exploding at their feet.

The shadow walkers didn’t die from it, though, and I could just get rid of one after four shots from my shotgun.

“Don’t shot when they’re that far, Mira, check your ammo,” said Irwin.

He sounded calm when he said it and that made it worse. I was the leader, in case he had forgotten.

“Mind your own business, would you? What’s the resupplier for, then?” I said as I finished the other walker then reloaded.

“We have no intel about these, Mira. And I only have this stupid pistol,” cried Phineas as two more shadow walkers attacked from afar.

“It’s too late to worry about her, you just said it: we have no techie. You could try and respond to the shots instead of whining, this armor won’t last forever.”

A bullet hit me on the face and the helmet got destroyed.

“Shit, I’m hit! Irwin, there are some behind us!”

I replaced the helmet as quickly as I could. A walker that came too close, and I had to punch him away. A shout of victory—more like a screech—behind my back made me aware that Phineas had killed one with the turret.

I had to rotate to cover them while they ate the takoyaki—that was so out of place, I can’t believe it yet. However, after it became obvious that their arms were their weak spot, it seemed like we would get out of there alive with no problem.

But that would have been boring, wouldn’t it?

After the last red walker in sight fell down and disappeared, I heard an explosion behind me. It was the turret.

“We’re under attack! We’re under attack!” screamed Phineas. Oh god, how I hated when he screamed like that.

“Shut up! Rebuild the turret and shut up, now! Where did it come from? Did you—” Another explosion interrupted me.

“I’m hit,” said Irwin, “piercing bullets, maybe HT-200. It went through my body and blew the recovery unit. It’s their boss.”

“My takoyaki stand!”

“How in the hell is their boss around? And where is it? Phineas, is the new turret—”

This time the interruption came from Irwin.

“I’m down.”

He fell to the ground, face down. We were so dead.

The resupplier blew up next and Phineas was already running away trying to hide. I wondered how many hits could I withstand with the heavy armor. No more than four.

The first hit was on my leg, as expected from a professional sniper. I wouldn’t be able to run and hide. I saw Phineas when I got the second hit. He was hiding behind a non-radar-proof wall. The wimp would get what he deserved, too.

I heard the third shot, but it didn’t hit me. After perfect accuracy this couldn’t be possible. I turned around.

Temperance Dinah Gold was behind me, on the brink of death after the shot.

“Techie!” screamed Phineas, and the next shot found his head.

Thank you for shutting him up, I thought.

“Two down, two wounded. You’re way too late,” I said.

“My apologies, but you have nothing to worry anymore. I have the intel you need,” she said, with a masculine voice.

“I think it’s too late.”

“It is not. Look at the rocketeer.”

Irwin was up, running behind us.

“You didn’t… you didn’t, right? I told you like three hundred times—”

“I did, and I have the intel you need,” she said.

“What’s the info, techie?” said Irwin.

“Red shadow walkers, the arms are their weak spot, two pistol shots and they’re down.”

We kept running and got behind a well protected wall, all wounded but no more losses. It was just a matter of time though: the boss would move or send more minions.

“Yeah, we know about the red shadow walkers, what do we do with their boss?” I said.

“Boss? What boss?” said Temperance.

“The one that is attacking us!”

“I have no intel of that. Should I go get the engineer?”

“No! I’ve told you five hundred times! You never use crystals for that!”

“You do, one. It is explained when you stand next to a body—”

“Just don’t go! Ahh! Forget about that, we need to know what to do with the boss!”

“I’ve always wondered why the techie chose to be a girl,” said Phineas out of nowhere.

“You!? You’re dead! How can you talk!?”

“Oh, after we made a petition they implemented it in this version. It’s convenient as hell! I’m sorry I wasn’t saying anything. When they got me I went to grab a slice of pizza. Did you guys missed me?”

I wondered if I could kill him while dead, but then a shot sounded and Irwin fell again.

“I’m tired of this, Mira, you can call me when you get a real party,” said his corpse before disappearing.

“From all of us, it was the rocketeer who rage quits? Shame, shame. I’ve been dead for a while, but am I complaining? No, I’m just fine. Let’s find a new rocketeer,” said Phineas.

“He just wanted to stop listening to you,” said Temperance.

“Oh, is that so? Then I won’t make you suffer that sad destiny anymore, you can try and stop me, but I think this is the end of The Electric Robbers.”

“Pillagers,” I said without hesitation.

Phineas body disappeared after he realized we weren’t trying to stop him. I looked around. Temperance was spinning around. I sighed.

“You are trying to look at them again, aren’t you?”

“Look at what?”

“Panties,” I said.

She stopped.

“I am disappointed about the lack of turnability of the skirts in this game.”

“I find it disgusting to hear a male voice coming out of that cute girl saying such a thing.”

“I find it disgusting that you told me this game had cute girls and then they ended up having unflippable skirts,” said Temperance. Those were her—his?—last words.

She fell down after a bang. I didn’t have to wait much to face my own death.

We got back in the lobby. The party was indeed lacking both Irwin and Phineas.

“So, are we trying again?”

“No, we’re not. We have no more members in the team, as you can see,” I said.

“I am sorry I was late… I was busy for real.”

“But but! Nobody takes this seriously!”

“I think the rocketeer did, if you ask me. As for me, you knew it was not my kind of game, that is why you told me about the cute characters.”

“Uninstall it, then. I’ll find another game. Anyway, it’s kind of late so I’ll go to sleep. The junior high is killing me. See you later.”

I jumped on my bed. it wasn’t late, but it was true that school was killing me. As well as this guy’s attitude.

He was a good friend, but while he was too direct at times—like this one—, he seemed to be too private about giving details of his life.

We had known each other for more than half a year now, when we met online. Yet I had no idea where he lived, when his birthday was or what he looked like.

I knew—in exchange, I guess—that he used to live in Sweden, he was planning “something huge,” as he said, and that he liked striped panties. I also knew he was in the third grade of junior high school because he said something about it when he thought his microphone was off.

It was so unfair because he knew everything about me. How my brother had banished me from the Kingdom of Hungary, just so he could get the throne. How I had slain a demon on my way to Japan. How I had stolen its weapon. How I would get revenge and become the legitimate Queen of Hungary.

I had even sent him a picture of my face in the hopes that he would do the same, but of course he didn’t.

And that was why, the next day, when I had to stay to clean up the classroom, it happened.

Holland-kun was there, reading a book about dinosaurs, Minamoto-san was next to him, waiting, when he came in.

“Jake, Minamoto, time has come for us to make the contract, we should—” and then he saw me.

“Hermit!?”

I looked at him, he knew my true identity, so I feared he was an enemy.

“Who are you?”

Minamoto-san looked at us alternating. Holland-kun kept reading, oblivious to everything else. Our senpai turned for a moment and when he turned back his eyes were red, his hair messy.

“This must be Freyja’s doing,” he said

“K-Karmin?!”

He smiled.

“Welcome to the team.”