Unfortunately for them, this form is only temporary. The DTs are always fatal.
I’d explain to you what a Razor Fox is here, but it’s pointless because this isn’t a Razor Fox anymore. It’s a shame, really. I kinda love those ninja-star-throwing fuckers. But all is not lost. We’ll have normal versions of these guys on the fifth floor, too. Too bad you won’t be seeing them since you’re probably about to get ripped to shreds.
A moment passed, and then it was in range. Katia opened fire. Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap. The bolts shot out of the large crossbow, coming at about two a second, which was pretty damn fast, but not nearly as fast as it’d been before when Hekla owned it. The crossbow was auto-loading, cocking, and firing. All she had to do was hold the prod down, and it’d start spamming bolts like one of those tennis ball machines.
Each magical, razor-tipped bolt was about twenty-inches long. The bolts disappeared on their own about a minute after being fired, but that was plenty of time to do some serious damage. Hekla’s bolts had been fire-tipped and sometimes electrically-charged, but we’d lost whatever caused that buff when we lost access to the rest of Hekla’s gear. The monster bayed as the bolts tore at its face and side, like a nail gun. Each hit knocked its health down, but only a tiny bit.
What the hell? How strong were these assholes?
One of the side effects of Katia forming into these odd shapes was that it confused monsters. Like when she was the train’s scoop, the mobs hadn’t realized she was living flesh and hadn’t attacked her directly. This mob, despite being riddled with holes, reacted the same way. The only living creature he saw was me. He howled again and charged.
The thing was terrifyingly fast. I loaded a banger and twirled, tossing the metal projectile directly at the round mouth. The ball shattered teeth as I scored a hit. It made a strangled noise and stopped, sliding on the rail. Katia continued to pump it with bolts, and now Donut joined the fray, tossing Magic Missiles into the creature from Mongo’s back.
The monster whimpered as it tried to dislodge the metal ball in its throat. I loaded another, this one a half-strength, impact-detonated hob-lobber. It was too close for a full strength. I fired again, again getting it into the monster’s giant mouth. I took out another tooth, like I was playing a game at the carnival. One more, and I win a prize. There was a muffled thump. Its tentacles thrashed about, one of them grasping a wooden railroad tie and breaking it in half. The monster was no longer focused on me or anybody else. It was starting to look like a hedgehog from all the bolts. Injury to its body only did minor damage. We had to get inside its mouth.
I started to shout for everybody to focus on the area when it suddenly exploded. Sizzling gore showered the track. It’d blown from the inside out, like a water balloon filled with Beefaroni.
The battle was over just as quickly as it started.
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t even know how we killed it. Either those bolts suck ass, or that thing is tough.”
“Carl, I didn’t get any experience at all,” Donut said. “These things cheat.”
Katia returned to her regular form. She wore the backpack to make the sentinel gun, but only had enough metal to form the shield.
“I don’t think it’s the bolts,” she said. “I think the body might be like living armor. When I hit the tentacles, it did a lot more damage. But they’re hard to hit. My crossbow skill is still only four.
We’d try again, but these things usually came in groups. It was going to take a lot of practice before I’d be comfortable facing two at a time.
Donut and Mongo jumped down from the platform. Mongo sniffed at the remains of the exploded monster. He made an odd, whimpering noise. Donut jumped down to inspect. She also sniffed at the remains. She froze.
“Carl,” Donut said. “Um, I think you might want to see this. It’s quite disturbing.”
Donita Grace: Holy shit. Holy shit. Guys. Don’t go to stop 24. They’re everywhere. Millions of them. Worse than the grubs. Don’t…
Warning: This message is from a deceased crawler.
My message screen exploded with people asking what was going on as I jogged up to the corpse of the monster.
“What the shit,” I said as the tiny, little red dots started appearing on my screen. I wasn’t reminded of the grubs. Instead, I thought of the fire ants.
That explained the lack of experience. We hadn’t killed the monster at all.
It had hatched.
When the creature had exploded, he’d dislodged several thousand, teeny-tiny, squirming monsters.
The AI took on a mock-motherly voice, as if it was trying to emulate a kindergarten teacher.
Krakaren Crotch Dumpling. Level 1.
Gather around little crawlers. It’s story time.
Once upon a time, on a distant planet, there lived a lonely creature. This planet teemed with flora and fauna, all of them growing and evolving and generally thriving and having a great time as they dashed forward through the eons. This creature also wanted to thrive, she also wanted to have a great time. But there was only one of her. She could not have children of her own. And this made her very angry, very cranky, but also very sad. More importantly, it made her determined.
And as Doctor Ian Malcom once famously said, Life, uh, finds a way.
The creature had a special ability. Her stomach was like a gas-station coffee vending machine, one where you could pick one of a thousand different choices. You could mix and match. She soon discovered if she ate this creature, she could make this substance. And if she ate that creature, she could make a different one. So she began to experiment. The creatures of her world thought of her as an apothecary. She could cure all ails.
But what she truly wished for was to create a child of her own. And after a thousand generations, she did just that. Almost. It’s a complicated process that involves a lot of failures. A lot of troublesome ghouls. But as another Earth saying goes, you need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, no?
What these wriggling parasites you see really are, are clones. The next part of the Krakaren story, where she discovers the ability to speak to all of clones telepathically, and then eventually form a collective mind, where she starts spreading across the universe and making a general nuisance of herself is for a different time.
All you need to know now, little crawler, is that you have to kill these things, and you have to kill them fast. After all, like all children, they grow up so very fast.
I suggest a nice, firm stomp.
I was already smashing them with my feet before the long-ass description ended. There were thousands of them, all about the size of a grain of rice. But they were already growing. And we were on gravel, which made my smushes ineffective.
“Step back,” I said. I’d killed most of them, but a few red dots remained. I had a half-full jug of moonshine in my inventory, and dumped it onto the track and tossed a torch, lighting the whole area on fire.
“Growler Gary had said they’d turned the whole place into a Krakaren nest,” Donut said. “He wasn’t kidding.”
“I guess not,” I said.
“I hope they stay at station 24,” Katia said.
28
The second cart for the Mindaro line never arrived. That was Bautista’s, leaving his group stranded at the end of the line. So without any further fanfare and very little discussion about how terrible of an idea this was, the four of us loaded up onto a rapid response cart and dialed ourselves onto the Mindaro line and headed down the track in an attempt to find the source of the problem.