“A what?”
“You would say that,” Hiro told his phone bitterly as he put it away. He squinted at the opening above, the red sunlight from the solar eclipse peeking through. I could make it with {Bounce}, or…
He glanced ahead to the darkness once he sensed movement. Hiro activated the light on the front of his backpack strap and gasped as it revealed a lanky man with a pie for a face.
“What the—”
Splat!
A hammer exploded out of the pie’s face. It slammed into the stone behind Hiro and magically retracted back to the dark, where a carbiner light clicked on.
“I’m not the main character,” he told what was clearly a Survivor as the creature with the pie face settled on the ground in a slump. Soul Essence rushed out of the monster and into the light beyond.
“I’m not either.” A teenage girl stepped out, Hiro now able to make out her features from the red glow coming from above. She wore an oversized black shirt, her legs clad in tights that extended into combat boots. The teenage girl had striking red hair, which she had mostly tucked behind a black baseball cap. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. “You’re not some sort of creep, are you?”
“Do what?” Hiro asked.
A wry grin spread across her face. “I’m Bianca.”
“Hiro.”
“Hero?”
“No, Hiro. It’s a Japanese name.”
“That mask is fucking weird, bro.”
“I’ve been told.”
Bianca peered up at the opening. As she turned, Hiro noticed the girl had a fuzzy pink shield strapped to her back. “So you fell down too. In Central Park?”
“Somewhere here, yep.”
“Same. These pie-faced fuckers run the catacombs. I’ve killed like thirty of them trying to find a way out.”
“With your hammer?”
Bianca looked down at the weapon. “It’s a magic hammer.” The teenager laughed. “It returns to my hand like I’m Thor or something. I’ve upgraded it too. It’s twice as strong as it was when I first got it. That wasn’t pleasant.”
“Upgrading it?”
“I had to beat a lot of shit to death with this hammer.” She flourished the weapon. “Looks cool, right? I guess it’s making me stronger, Level Eight over here. I didn’t want muscles, though.”
“You have a shield too?”
“I sure do.” She swiveled to him slightly. “And it’s badass.” Bianca nodded to the hilt of Hiro’s katana. “You got a sword?”
“Yes.”
“Lucky. If I had a sword I would have a higher Interim Performance Grade. What are you at?”
Hiro checked briefly, the information appearing before him in a flash. “B minus.”
“For real? Not fair. I’m still at C plus. It’s like, what does a girl have to do around here to game this shit? I have plenty of followers, though. These pie-faced fuckers. They hand out followers like it’s Halloween.”
“Really? Huh. I was actually in Central Park to gain more followers.”
“Did you see the big dinosaur-bone-thingy?”
“It moved. That’s what created the gap above.”
Bianca’s eyes widened to some degree. “Dang. Whoever kills that thing is going to get hooked up.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Well. I guess we’re stuck in here together. I followed one of the tunnels all the way to the end. There’s only one more option to my knowledge, so I’m guessing if we go that way, we’ll clear out more of the pie guys and find an exit, which is probably guarded by something knowing the Doom System.”
“If you want out, I can get you up there,” Hiro offered.
“How?”
Rather than tell her, Hiro bounced out of the catacomb, landed in Central Park, and then jumped back in.
She laughed. “For real? That’s the stupidest power I’ve seen yet and I totally want it. Ugh. Not fair. Totally not fair. Fuck you, Doom System, for not giving me that power.”
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“I can bring you up if you want.”
“Are you trying to grope me or something? Kidding.” Bianca stuck her tongue out at Hiro. “Sorry, I sort of just say whatever comes to mind, especially now after all the shit that has happened in the last year. I especially don’t care.”
“Okay.”
“So it’s up to you. We can leave these catacombs and head up, or we can check out the next tunnel,” Bianca said, in a way that told Hiro she would be staying with him for a while.
She did say the pie guys handing out followers… Hiro gave her the thumbs up. “Second tunnel it is.”
“And if the second tunnel isn’t worth it, we’ll use your bouncy power to head up. Just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t get in my way. And I don’t mean that in a ‘I’m trying to boss you around way.’ But let me take the lead. I guess that does mean I’m trying to boss you, ha! I won’t throw the hammer at you, but the boomerang aspect of it has a bit of a mind of its own. I don’t want it to kill you. Unless, you want to die or something. Then I’ll gladly kill you.”
Hiro tilted his head at her.
“What? Also, what do you look like under that mask, and what does it do again?”
He pushed the mask to the top of his head. “The mask—”
“Oh, you’re like half-Asian or something. Hiro, Japanese name. Cool. I’m white. I think I’m like Irish descent because of the red hair and the freckles.”
“The mask makes enemies laugh. Sometimes. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it helps.”
“Really? Cool. I don’t have so much gear. I keep teaming up with people because I’m super friendly and people seem to think because I’m a teenager that I need protecting. I don’t,” she said, the humor in her voice leaving. “Don’t get this twisted.”
“I never said you did. Which way was it again?”
“We have to know a little about each other before we start killing pie guys.”
“Do we?”
“Your name is Hiro, not Hero, and you clearly didn’t take a superpower when the gates opened. My stupid parents did, dad first. As if he didn’t already have enough. We lived on the Upper West Side, comfortably, too. But no, he was greedy, so he was one of the first to take a power. He got wings and got hit by an intercontinental missile.”
“Shit. Really?”
She laughed. “No, not really. Keep up. He got hit by a plane. He flew too high or something. Someone at my gym called him Icarus, but I don’t know what that means, I don’t really care, and fuck that personal trainer anyway. My mom got an ability after him. Turned her into a crab-thing. Remember when the superpowers got weird?”
“I do.” Hiro recalled some of the strange powers that were later distributed by the Doom System. At first, the powers had started as normal run-of-the-mill X-Men powers from the golden years. Then, they became strange. Amalgamations, abilities that could make someone an absolute monster or as strong as a paper bag. It was at that point that Hiro had started to feel like he wasn’t crazy for avoiding the gates. It was also at this point that Monica decided to give the gate a try…
“Okay, you’re not so talkative. Is the Doom System fucking with you?”
“Isn’t it fucking with everyone?” he asked Bianca.
“I mean, are its descriptions becoming stranger and does it, I don’t know, warp shit about your life and spit it back at you.”
“It seems to keep bringing up the fact I am part Japanese, if that’s what you’re asking. It likes to combine things that make no sense, like the pilgrims and Iceland.”
Bianca crossed her arms over her chest. “Ugh, yeah, that’s the Doom System for you. I once had an eating disorder. Had to get treatment. Had to go to one of those care facilities. The system never fails to remind me of that. It even gave me a Roulette Skill known as Purge. I feel like it put these pie guys down here too, you know, to mess with me.”
“Did you like pie or something?”
“I fucking loved to binge eat pie. Magnolia Bakery, oh, bro, remember that place? I did some damage there. Their carrot cake changed my life on a daily basis. But that’s all behind me now,” she said with conviction. “There’s no time to worry about my weight when the weight of the world is now on my shoulders. Ha! I came up with that myself. What about your Roulette Skill?”
“I turn into a wolf creature.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
“I wonder what that says about you,” she said as she turned away. “It could be something cliche like ‘we all have a monster in us’ or the Doom System could be a big Twilight fan. It does seem to be mixing everything up, like you said.”
“A friend of mine has a theory about that.”
“Are you coming or what?” Bianca asked.
Hiro placed his mask over his face and caught up with her, where he decided to change the subject away from the system and to the enemies ahead. “Tell me more about these pie-faced monsters.”
“For one, they’ve got swords. Needle swords. That one I killed was probably going to pull it out on you when I got him in the face. Their bodies are heavily armored. I mean, they might be dressed like Jack Skeleton in little Gru suits, but it’s all armor. Wait.” She turned back to him. “Why did you wrap your arms in duct tape? I meant to ask that earlier. It’s like New York Fashion Week meets post-apoc chic.”
“It’s armor. Touch it.”
Hiro extended his arm to her and Bianca flicked her finger against it. “Whoa.”
“I can give you some, if you want.”
“I definitely don’t want to look like some sort of techno mummy, but I could see using it in a different way. Sure. Let me have a little.”
Hiro got his duct tape out and gave it to her. Bianca wrapped her palm and the outer side of her hand with it and used her teeth to cut the tape. “It’s really like normal tape.”
“Until it sets.”
She wrapped her other hand in the same way. “This is so I can slap something or block one of their swords if need be. These pie guys are fast. They’re like fencers. I’m surprised that one didn’t kill you.” Bianca tossed the tape back to Hiro. “Anyway, aim for their heads. Don’t bother striking their bodies. It would be like hitting a concrete pillar.”
“Got it.”
“And remember, let me stay in front. I should be able to dome a few of them before they reach us. There are lots of them, and to my knowledge, they’re not listed in the status menu because this is some sort of special zone. But they are worth a ton of followers—”
One of the pie guys exploded out of the dark. Hiro jumped back, drew his katana, and swatted at his opponent.
“It’s head!” Bianca tossed her hammer at the pie-faced man, killing him instantly. Her weapon returned to her hand, along with a flash of red Soul Essence.
“Did that one have a… smirk on its face?” Hiro asked.
“Some of them do. We’re close to their hive.”
“Hive?”
“I don’t know. Insert some collective noun for pie-faced monsters. There will be a lot of them is what I’m saying. If this tunnel is anything like the last, they’re going to be charging at us any moment now. Are you sure you’re ready? Because once they start coming, they’re not going to stop. By the end of all this, if we’re lucky, we’ll be covered in pie guts.” Bianca continued on. “If we’re unlucky, I don’t know.”