Divinity Rescue Corps
93- New Aspect Discovered

A creature made of stone got Archie the evil Guardian directly in the cojones. This one was a pillbug the size of a sofa, and as it scuttled by, it made a sound like sand rubbing against stone. I have to say, it sounded a whole lot like dry laughter.

I had recruited owls that manifested little tornadoes to catch prey, flamingoes and salamanders made of fire, gigantic frogs that spat poisonous goop, turtles with clouds under each of their four feet, and much, much more. There was a swarm of bugs that literally zapped lightning between them, several of those Geodiles with the gemstone teeth, and butterflies that teleported here and there. A whole big ash bunch of them.

And they. Were. Everywhere.

Centipedes with flowers growing out of their backs crawled up the Guardians’ legs, and Magmamanders set the place aflame just by casually galumphing through the campsite. Flameingoes flapped in, landed nearby, and also set things on fire.

Blake came out of his already-burning hut to find the place chock full of Nakamamon. Geodiles were chasing two of his people off that way, one of the pillbugs nearly crashed into another two, and the fifth one had his pants set on fire. The chaos was glorious.

“This. Is. Awesome,” I muttered.

The Wizards were skedaddling, and so was Cinzy. She raced right by where I was, missing me by mere inches. I was pleased to hear her softly cursing.

“Draaaaaat!” Blake bellowed. “Come on out and get yours, you backstabbing little prick! I know you’re behind this.”

Whatever special ability he was using, Blake’s call made Drat appear, knife in hand. He actually slashed Blake across the back of the leg before pulling back, surprised at himself. It had been an enhanced Taunt power, different than Fury.

When Blake whirled, he was far faster than Drat. He had a hold of the Rogue’s shirt in a heartbeat.

It wasn’t fast enough. He got three Flutterbys in the face, a Shrubbet using him as a launching pad, a Magmamander directly underfoot, and one of those gigantic pillbugs casually making its way past, bumping him aside. The pants tore and Drat sprang away.

“How… what the hell…” Blake said, and swatted several of the teleporting butterflies away.

“It was me!” I shouted, from far away.

“I got him, captain!” Archie said, but didn’t get three steps before skidding to a halt. The Ferrosaur’s transformation had appeared.

Metallirex

Second Stage Nakamamon

Metallirex rarely venture out of the deeper caves, except to mate. These larger and more dangerous versions of the Ferrosaur chew through vast amounts of minerals and veins of mana-infused metal. These creatures mate for life and have no tolerance for having their mate taken from them.

Typical length: 40-75  foot from nose to tail (large)

Typical weight: 4000-10,000 pounds

Gender: unknown

Aspect: Draconic/earth

Transformations: unknown -> Ferrosaur -> Metallirex

Metallirex has been added to your Nakamadex.

“I thought you said you got them both!” I called to Blake.

The gigantic muscle man stared at me, hard, then back to the gigantic dinosaur made of earth, metal, and crystal. It was like a tyrannosaurus, but with longer arms and more spines running along its back. The enormous creature homed in on Boss, who had been the loudest at the time, and charged after him. The ground reverberated with every stomp.

The panicked Guardian, suddenly not worth his shaved head, his tattoos or his bulging muscles, immediately turned and ran.

It had worked. Cinzy was over there with her brother, but none of the creatures were paying them any attention. Only the Guardians, who had beaten the tar out of them for weeks now, had giant bugs crawling all over them, or giant bugs flitting around in front of their faces, or fire birds burning their stuff. Sure it wasn’t an orderly stampede, but it was a stampede nonetheless.

Blake kept batting creatures aside even as he tromped toward me, so I turned and ran.

Now, with Golightly on my feet, I had five free levels of any skill that needed feet. Right now, that skill was Run. I put on a burst of speed, and heard him roar out in anger.

It was time. I knew it was time when the prompt appeared in my vision.

Physicality check: An opponent has made you his target. You are being pursued on foot. Your equipped item Golightly provides you with 5 levels of Run, along with your level 6 Physicality. Do you wish to spend Tokens on this check?

*Note: This is an opposed check. You may not spend a Token to retry this check.

Total Tokens: 6 Physicality and 6 Free Tokens.

“Healer!” he screamed. “I will rip your spine out and ram it down your throat!”

“All of them,” I panted, ignoring the fact that what he was suggesting was physically impossible.

I had high hopes that Blake was as arrogant as he seemed. He knew my Physicality was nothing compared to his. He wouldn’t spend Tokens on this check. Why would he need to? In his mind, my Physicality couldn’t be much higher than 2 or 3.

Also, none of my compatriots had Free Tokens like me. Luckily for me, I’d nearly died trying to be nice to the God of Meadows, and it had gifted me 5 Free Tokens.

I wanted my team back. My old life back. The sky needed to be a shimmering blue, the clouds needed to twinkle, and there were five women back in the camp who I needed to satisfy sexually on a regular basis. Okay three on a regular basis and two intermittently.

So when the Tokens came cla-clink!ing into being and disappearing in puffs of rainbow mana glitter, the muscles in my legs surged and I put every Olympic runner to shame. Ever. All of them. I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder, but I would’ve seen the disbelief all over Blake’s face as he slammed down on the place where I’d just been… and I took off like a roadrunner.

“Meep meep,” I said darkly, then laughed.

Blake still didn’t think he needed twelve Tokens worth of speed, so he took off after me. Which was great, because that gave  me the time I needed to get the town in view, and then reach it. I had traveled some five miles in the space of about five minutes.

Math went through my head the whole way through: if he had a Physicality of 12, and he had a Run skill like I had Diagnosis or Treatment, then he’d have some 15 to 18 levels, and that meant he could expect 5 to 6 successes on average. Around half my speed.

Chancing a glance over my shoulder, I caught sight of Blake in the distance, closing. He was truly monstrous like this, huge arms and legs pumping, and his head buried so far in mountainous shoulders it was hard to see from this distance.

The roar that came out and met me… less difficult to detect from a distance.

I waited until he was much closer before stepping into the town. Not far off lay dozens of Nakamamon, both humanoid and bestial, that were in a sort of trance.

Cinzy had gotten in here without falling prey to the god’s influence, and when I’d been black bagged, the Boys had gotten in here. They had used Durability, and perhaps another skill to resist falling into a stupor. I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Without Physicality, I needed to make sure there wouldn’t be any way for him to grind me to paste in one swift strike. I ducked back into the first alley, and peeked out just as Cinzy had done.

I heard him and felt the ground shake at the same time. He barreled into a wall and right through it.

“Whoa there, cowboy!” I called, and Fierce scored an immediate Taunt check, which I passed. Temporary Physicality and Durability Tokens. I then moved another house away, just in case he came through the building and spotted me on the other side.

Moving up towards the center of the town put me under the influence of the god situation. The first Durability check came up, and I was bewildered to see I’d only barely passed it.

“What?”

I’d leant my Prismatic Apparel to Cinzy, the same item that boosted my Divine Resistance skill by 5 levels. However, Healer’s Resistance made sure I wouldn’t be making another Durability check for some twelve hours.

“Fletcher!” Blake shrieked. “Come out here and fight like a man.”

Two things here: one, this was the stupidest, most moronic thing a person could say when one person was a plain old guy, and the other was an entire gym’s worth of muscle. Two, Blake had both a Taunt skill, and a Taunt ability, so things like stupidity hardly mattered. This was magic. The ability, as I was about to learn, was called Provocative.

You are under the influence of the special ability Provocative. This Taunt power will force you to attack Blake, Brawldar. You may resist by spending 7 Likability or Durability Tokens. Would you like to resist?

Note: This is a contested check, and you may not pay a Token to retry.

Current Tokens: 1 Durability, 6 Likability, 0 Free Tokens

If I went out there and took a swing at Blake, he would flick my face and take my entire head off. I was already almost out of Tokens, and I desperately needed them.

“Spend the Tokens,” I muttered, and again heard Blake’s roar of fury from too close. All seven of the Tokens appeared, cla-cling! one after another, bathing me in the mana necessary to resist marching out there only to have him kill me instantly. Six of them bore the Likability sigil, while the last one showed the bent back of a figure carrying a heavy pack.

“Blake!” I called. “Something’s wrong, buddy!”

“What’s wrong is you won’t get out here and have your head smashed open like a ripe melon.”

I kept strafing between alleys, trying to judge where he was. I’d gone through the abilities of the four Guardians on my own team. There was growth, manifesting extra limbs in order to fight, intimidation or taunt social abilities, another ability for resisting social checks and being tough, the manifesting a shield ability, and an interposing power where the Guardian could take the damage instead of a nearby allies.

“I’m gonna kill you, Fletcher!”

“No I mean something’s really wrong.”

I caught just a sliver of the gigantic son of a birch. He was hunched over, his enormous hands clenching and unclenching. The fingers on his hands were easily three times as wide as they should’ve been. He looked more like Larelle now, honestly, with his neck totally buried in trapezius muscle and his shirt splitting down the back.

“You can’t trick me again, Healer! I’m gonna…”

He leapt in my direction and brought down a house. Crashed right through the corner of the building. Before I ducked aside, my UI did the strangest thing.

Brawldar

Basic Nakamamon

No information has been added to the Nakamadex about this creature. Observations thus far include:

Fueled by rage and the need to fight, this creature exists only to match its physical prowess against others, to come out on top.

Typical length: unknown. Current specimen stands 8 feet

Typical weight: unknown. Current specimen weighs 450 pounds

Gender: male

Aspect: fighting

Transformations: Brawldar -> unknown

Brawldar has been added to your Nakamadex.

What in the boogie trees was happening here? Fighting aspect Nakamamon did not exist.

Or so I thought. The achievement that popped up on the heels of Identify told another story.

Achievement: new Nakamamon aspect discovered

Before now, there were no Fighting aspect Nakamamon. Unprecedented! Curious! The world at large may never be the same.

Reward: +1 Class level (both classes)

“Or apparently they do exist,” I muttered. “Now anyway.”

Blake hadn’t been taking his anti-magic pills. More and more magic had seeped into his body, transforming him like it had been transforming the rest of us. While Isabelle had been changing into a marshmallow and cotton candy bisexual Guardian, defender of right and goodness, Cinzy had been slowly changing into…what? A shapeshifter? And Regina had clearly been transforming into a flower creature, glittery and beautiful.

Drat I hadn’t seen, but I had definitely seen the tattoos spreading over Ivy’s body and beginning to swirl around, plainly moving under her skin. I’d seen the earth patterning creeping over Trent, and Tara turning a literal metallic bronze. My own hair had gone verdant green, and I’d noticed that my veins weren’t bluish any longer either, before I whipped up a batch of the medicine. Maybe I would become a sort of nature druid, a tree  thing.

Reading through the windows and thinking through the implications froze me in place for a moment too long. Blake landed on the rooftop of the building directly next to me, and I turned only to find him jumping down on top of me.

“You did this,” he said, “you caused all this.”

And then… he backed off. He stood up and motioned with his hand. No ripping my spine out or tearing me limb from limb.

“Come on then, let’s see who comes out on top.”

“I can’t fight you, Blake. I can help you.” I was not sure about this.

He threw back his head and laughed. “You think I need help? This is the best I’ve felt in my entire life. I could take on a dozen of you. Two dozen. I could take on a hundred copies of you, you little weakling. Come on, I want you to throw the punch. Then you take my punch, and we see—”

A thud behind me announced that Larelle had landed. The enormous orange-skinned Nakamamon towered almost as high as Blake, looking amazing in her martial arts gi outfit.

Can you take me on? she called.

Blake cracked his…three knuckles… and then cocked his head side to side, cracking it as well. Since when did he only have three fingers and a thumb on either hand? And since when was his skin orange, no… blazing crimson?

Chrysta was floating nearby. “What is that?” she asked quietly.

“Fighting aspect?” Isabelle asked from behind Larelle. She and Ivy came out. “Is that… that’s Blake, isn’t it?”

“Don’t hurt him,” I called. “I think we can fix it.”

“Fix!” Blake roared. “You think I need to be fixed? I’ve never felt so good in my life. Okay now, who’s first?” He slammed a huge fist into his other hand. “One at a time or all together, I don’t care.”

“Oh my gosh,” I heard Regina say from her perch on a roof not far off. “Blake?”

“Good!” Blake rejoiced. “More for me to fight. Now COME ON!”

I got as far as, “Don’t—” before things went into melee mode.

Isabelle zipped forward with shield raised, and grabbed onto the back of my shirt. She and Ivy wrenched me backwards along the cobbles while Larelle leapt over and met Blake. Both of them crashed huge fists into one another.

“No!” I shouted.

It was too late.

I will say this for Blake: he went down hard, and he went down fast. You know, the bigger they are and all that. But it wasn’t Larelle’s right hook that did it. He’d just pitched her over his shoulder and put her through the wall of the nearest building when he stopped, staggered, and started to say something. He got out a mush-mouthed half word before slumping to the cobbles.