7/24

Hollywood Sign dungeon, inside Studio 15

4:09 PM

Two tanks trundle towards us, crossing the dry, brown desert at their own pace, still dozens of miles away. They're old M4 Shermans.

"No jets today?" asks Quins.

I scan the horizon. "Oh, looks like a chopper from the other side." It's got to be at least a hundred miles out.

Mercy is wearing her purple Psy Dragon Ren costume. It's got barrier magic to keep Quins alive. She asks, "shouldn't these things make a lot of noise? I thought I read that."

"Maybe they're just making the amount of noise that tanks and helicopters make in movies," I speculate. I switch to my Void Crow armor. It's better against heavy enemies. "I can take the tanks."

Two more helicopters slide out from behind the first, having concealed their silhouettes by remaining in tight formation with the lead chopper. Not being Air Force, I don't know what helicopters those are, other than "the kind with big drums of rockets under their little side wings."

"I can take these three, I believe," Quins muses. He holds his right hand up and three devices, each the size of a D battery, appear. "Oh yes, I do so enjoy being Lucky, that I do."

He has a smirk on his face that indicates something that shouldn't have happened did, in fact, actually happen. I have some knowledge of how his powers work. He's got a crap load of Luck and a set of abilities which make his creations sometimes produce more than normal. Or better than normal. Or more often than normal. The uncertainty is why I stay the fuck away from creations.

Quins lightly tosses the D batteries into the air and each one unfolds tiny propellers and flies away towards the oncoming combat helicopters.

Quins and I face away from each other. Mercy stands between us and raises an arm in each direction. Purple glowing spheres form around her hands.

"Ready?" I ask.

"Ready," Mercy says.

"Ready," Quins says.

I rush forward towards the tanks. I push off with as much acceleration as I can muster, firing off like a rocket. My right foot slams down and pushes me further, faster. Each step launches me. This isn't running anymore. This is something beyond that. Each thrust of my legs comes faster and faster. I go dozens of feet between each step as I'm barely touching the ground.

One of the tanks fires at me and I try to bring up Void Daggers between me and the tank shell. The daggers form but can't actually keep up with me at this point. That's interesting. As soon as I realize that, the shell is on top of me. My Reflexes let me see the shell's flight. I simply get out of its path, dodging just a few feet to the right. As it gets within 10 feet of me, it explodes. I'm knocked aside, my momentum flinging me forwards, the explosion flinging me to my right. I tumble, skid dozens of feet, then slam my hand into the ground to flip myself back up. I land on my feet and skid a bit more before I stop.

I check myself. I don't feel hurt. I check my armor. It's fine. My Void Daggers got shattered, but that's acceptable. I literally got shot by a tank and survived unscathed. Holy fucking shit.

The other tank fires at me. I dig in my heels and face the shot head on. The blast shakes me and pushes me back, but as the black smoke and orange fireball dissipate, I am otherwise unaffected.

The tanks come to a stop. They point their guns at each other. The guns waggle up and down. Are they talking to each other? Through their gun barrels?

The two tanks start to reverse while firing at me. I chuckle. Yeah, sorry dudes, but I need a level.

I chase after them, closing the distance in seconds. Standing between them I summon more Void Daggers than I can count. Actually, that's a lie. My Intelligence lets me count and calculate with ridiculous speed, so I immediately know this is 232 Void Daggers. They spiral around me like a massive school of fish.

The best thing about my Void form is the Entropy effect. Each attack to a specific location makes that location volatile, and likely to explode with a follow up attack to the same location. Now, if one were to, for example, send 116 Void Daggers to the same location on a tank, what would happen is that the first explosion would create a small crater in the tank's armor. The next attack would hit inside the crater, making it volatile. The next attack would cause an explosion inside that crater, causing a deeper, but not wider, crater. Now repeat this process dozens of times over the course of, let's say, ten seconds, and what happens is that you've got a ragged, foot-wide hole straight through the side of a tank and out the other side. Of course, for this example, we assume that we're doing this to two different tanks at the same time.

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The tanks explode to my sides and I get my level. I check on Quins and Mercy.

4:15 PM

From here I can see green laser beams shooting from what I assume are Quins's D batteries. Each laser is concentrated on one of the helicopters. One of his turrets(?) stops firing its laser. Quins fires a neon green arrow at it, which promptly absorbs the arrow and then resumes its laser duties.

The helicopters are firing barrages of rockets, which Mercy is calmly deflecting with a curved purple energy shield. It's easily wide enough to cover her and Quins. Her shield breaks. Before I can even be concerned, she makes another, closer to her and Quins, then pushes it forward to where the previous barrier was.

I start running towards them, but I don't need to hurry. It'll be okay. They've got this in the bag. I see Quins turn to Mercy and she seems to be scolding him, probably for not taking this seriously. Quins aims and fires an arrow straight up. The green arrow drips acid as it flies, sizzling against the desert sand. At the apex of its flight, way above the fight, the arrow turns on a dime, then flits down and into one of the helicopters. It hits the top propeller, which starts melting. One blade goes flying off and the helicopter spins out of control, crashing and exploding.

The first two laser turrets now focus on the right helicopter. It starts to wobble in flight. Quins points at the third turret, then at the right helicopter. The third turret joins the other two and the front of that helicopter starts to glow green. Glass and metal fragments trail from the helicopter as it careens towards the ground.

A globe of light envelopes Mercy, and in a second she's transformed, adding the Angle Frame mecha armor to her Psy Dragon armor. The result is a purple and white armor with a mecha dragon theme. The boots are tall and have sharp spike heels. Mercy holds her left arm out and a round purple energy shield forms in front of her. It must be ten feet across. In her right hand forms the mecha spear, though now, in addition to the blue laser spearhead, there are two purple laser prongs, making it a beam trident.

Her wings, now mecha wings, flip behind her and waves of blue and purple energy spray out, acting as thrust. She flies up towards the helicopter Quins is ignoring, her shield ahead of her. A dozen rockets slam into the shield but she plows through the explosions, carving a hole through a column of black smoke. She reaches the chopper and her beam trident stabs forward, into the cockpit. There's nobody inside, of course, but that's probably the robot's head. These things are still Transformer knock-offs, right? She pulls the trident out to the right, ripping metal and wires out, which rain down.

The helicopter tilts towards Mercy. Mercy spins to her right, letting the helicopter go past, but she rakes her beam trident along its side as it goes. The bottom half of the chopper falls loose, open like a door ajar. Metal parts and long wires drop as if the helicopter had been disemboweled. The chopper flies another dozen feet before the whole thing drops like a rock.

4:19 PM

We metaphorically kick the robots until they turn into loot. We get a crap load of cash, this time in Yen. Because Transformers are originally Japanese? But the movies weren't! Whatever, since the Dracosys money is all counterfeit, we can't spend it directly. Buuuut we can slide it into the magic item ATM at home (muahaha.)

We also get a magic green beret and a bazooka. Quins gets both. He says he has a plan for the bazooka.

Acid Green Beret. Grants immunity to acid damage, +10 Intelligence, +20 Reflexes, and +10% sight distance.

Anti-Tank Bazooka. Fires bazooka rounds that are highly effective against targets with metal armor more than 2 inches thick. Reloads if target is killed or after 1 hour.

4:21 PM

"How do I look, eh?" Quins asks, slowly turning to model his new hat.

"Less protected than a man wearing a helmet," is my pragmatic reply.

"I can sew a little patch onto it, if you like," Mercy offers.

Quins smiles. "I'll look into that, thanks!"

"Got my level," I say to them. Actually I got two, but I don't need to brag. "Let's go see how the others are doing."

I'm still expecting to be ambushed the second I actually use that level to cure myself of Scourge, so I hold off on that until we're ready. Jose told me that if I get back to Dallas he can use our tank and his gunplay techniques to obliterate anything the Dracosys sends at me. I'm looking forward to the next few hours.

4:23 PM

We're at the front of the dungeon. Mercy and I can leave whenever, but Quins has the 24 Hour Lockdown effect on him.

Mercy is peering outside of the dungeon. The latest dungeon break wave is already over. Mercy waves at someone. She yells. "Ivy!"

"So, it's alright if you need to get going," Quins says to me. "I can stay here, sit out my 24 hour time with these fine folks here." He gestures to some Navy Seals who look dead on their feet. You can't attack the outside monsters from inside, but you can send exhausted troops inside a relatively safe dungeon. That reduces the overall human combatants outside a dungeon, thus reducing the maximum quantity of monsters the dungeon can deploy during each wave.

"I can leave the airship with you, so long as you promise to kill anyone who tries to steal it."

Quins gives a very exaggerated salute, "it would be my honor to guard your airship, my lord. Also, I will consider it my duty to make too many omelets, in your absence."

I laugh. "Yeah, can't let the eggs expire."

I turn to Mercy. She's at the exit, talking to Ivy, who's just outside. One of the Navy guys pushes past them, exiting the dungeon.

"Dude, rude!" I hear Ivy say.

4:24 PM

A bright light flashes from outside the dungeon.

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