As we stepped in Nora and Brittney immediately went to work. I took the moment to take in our surroundings. It had once been a chiropractor’s office. There were many small rooms along the edges of the large central space. The space was a mess, with the only upside being that there were many spaces to rest a prone body on. Of injured prone bodies, we had 5. Four guys, including Pvt. Gorman were on their feet covering all the exits, except for the door to the rest of my team. “Brett, get Billy and Frank. And then stay between Dennis and Joe to support whichever one needs help at the time. Nora, how quickly can you get these guys up and in fighting condition?” Brett exited the building quickly; the kid moved fast.

  “We’re using 6 of our remaining cookies on these three. They should be done eating them momentarily. I’ve gotten potions into the other two with Brittney’s help.” She sounded rushed, like she was literally still trying to frantically finish the tasks she was mentioning.

  “Great.” I turned to Pvt. Gorman, “Where’s the sergeant?” He pointed to the guy that was having a potion fed to him by Brittney. I approached both Brittney and the sergeant, “Sgt., what happened?”

  “Who are you? you shouldn’t be in here.” He was in pain, but he was more pissed off at my presence than the arrow that found a spot between the plates inserted into his military grade Kevlar vest. Brittney had pulled it out, but it still sat there resting in his lap as a reminder that he was getting injured by mere arrows.

  “I’m the guy that used the last of his limited supply of actual magical healing potions and magical girl scout cookies to heal your squad. So, maybe the words you are looking for are ‘Thank You.’”

  He looked at me like I had just spouted a statement that would have been in an apocalyptic video game 36 hours ago. “What you just said sounds like absolute bullshit. How the hell does anyone have Healing Potions! Magical Girl Scout Cookies!” He spoke so many of the words like an accusation.

  I learned into my persuasion and command skills in the hopes that the system would throw me a bone. “You need to face our new reality. Monsters are now real. They are invading us from what is essentially Hell. This is like Ragnarok and Revelations turned reality. You were shot with short guys with bows. They seemed to materialize from thin air and shoot you with freakish accuracy. There were big reddish Orc looking guys that you shot more than once. Your bullets tore through their pitiful leather armor, but could barely pierce their skin. Private Gorman got tossed out of third story window so far that he cleared the car next to the curb with plenty of room to spare. And you have probably seen some crazy lightning blasts frying people. None of this shit is sane, but this IS our new reality!” I didn’t raise my voice much with those last words, but I did seem to punctuate the air with my tone. I mentally crossed my fingers in the hopes the speech worked.

  He paused. I wasn’t sure, but the confused look on his face told me at least something got through. I did throw a lot of darts at the wall with that speech. “Did you guys fight a bunch of short wolfmen and orcs too? This is crazy. How is any of this real?”

  “When I say this is our new reality, I mean it. You can’t ever go back to the easier view of the world before now. This is reality. If we want the human race to survive, we have to fight and win. So, how about you tell me what happened.”

  “We cleared the first floor fine. Our vests blocked the arrows, well the plates in them did. I got hit on the second floor by an arrow that struck between the plates. Then the first fire team went up to the third floor while my team was trying to clear out the second. Those reddish brutes, they took so many bullets. We took down 3 or 4, but I emptied over half a clip into one of them, with the last few shots in his face at point blank before he fell down.” His story was little different than my first encounter with orcs, difference was that he killed it before it was leaping onto his body. Frank saved me then, and his shield taunt could save us again.

  “Frank, you still got any shield taunts?” Frank nodded and held up 2 fingers. That’s all we needed to get through the day. “Sgt. Hastings, what abilities do your guys have?”

  “I have a command ability to give my squad skill bonuses for a minute each time I use it. 3 guys have a rifleman class with deadeye shot ability to hit critical points in the enemy more often. The other 6 have an infantryman class that makes their gear not impact their movements in 10 minute increments.” The deadeye shot ability could give us much needed head shots. That is the best plan with the resources we had.

  “Okay, so have the guys with infantryman hold down the points of entry on this floor, I’ll go upstairs with Frank, Billy, Nora, and any of the Riflemen that can stand. Brittney will stay here and keep tending to any injuries that she can. She keeps rocking that first aid skill of hers.” Brittney looked like she wanted to object, but held back for now. I probably couldn’t always do that with her, let her be close to the action, but not let her really go out and kill stuff.

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  “Why would you be going upstairs?”

  “I have a plan. Besides, the abyssal orcs take a lot of firepower. I have Nora to help with that.”

  “Her?” he pointed to Nora.

  “Nora the Orc Destroyer!” Billy threw in to the mix. Fuck me, does Billy have a death wish?

  “Billy, you Pendejo, I should shove this wand up your ass and blast away, but you ain’t worth the charge.” She cracked her knuckles like she was gonna throw punches his way.

  The exchange was not lost on the rest of the room, smirks and smiles spread across many a face. The sergeant didn’t look convinced, “Again, Her?”

  Billy opened his mouth to say something, but Frank did a fake cough to get his attention and proceeded to shake his head slowly while giving Billy the death stare. Billy knew that meant he was about to cross a line and get smacked upside the head by Frank.

  The sergeant still had this unconvinced look on his face. “Fine, the four of us will clear the stairwell and second floor. I would love to borrow 2 cannisters of tear gas, if you have any that is.”

  “Borrow tear gas?” He was dubious but handed them over.

  “Definitely just borrowing. Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan.”

  “You can borrow two of my guys, but unlike the tear gas, they need to come back in the same condition they were lent to you in.” He held my gaze a moment longer than necessary to impress upon me that they better come back alive.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The stairwell was all concrete, which worked well for us. It had the obligatory small gap between each side’s stairs of the vertical zigzagging shaft. Billy and I eyed it carefully from our spots peeking around the doorframe. “You know where to put the ability, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m not Chris, God rest his soul. I get the idea of an expanding radius due to cramped conditions.” With that statement he pointed his finger around the corner and cast gold dust in the open space between the stairs hugging each side at the second floor level. A massive cloud of golden dust particles exploded at the point he wanted and quickly filled the entire stair well. Golden snowflakes spread everywhere; they burst upwards towards the third floor and blasted downward towards the ground floor. It was actually rather beautiful, and if we weren’t worried about getting killed by lupin sneaking behind us, I would have enjoyed the moment more.

  Then the sneezing fits started and the camo abilities were completely broken. We saw the outline of multiple wolf headed lupin sneezing furiously. My hope that big wolf snouts meant higher sensitivity to abilities that caused debilitating sneezing was proven true. No time to celebrate, so we picked out the first few guys that were closest to us. They were hacking less than 10 feet away on the first handful of steps up to the second floor. They had previously been crouched behind the solid railing, but the sneezing got them up on their feet. We had already put cloth over our noses and mouths, so we stepped into the stairwell, hoping our protections helped resist the spell. I wasn’t worried if we got a little affected by the gold dust. I just needed these stupid lupin to be temporarily incapable of mounting any kind of defense or retaliation. My plan was partially successful. We didn’t become incapacitated with sneezing, but we still sneezed.

  We headed up the steps on at a time shooting Lupin as we went. They sneezing had turned into hacking coughs. Their big noses were helping us a ton. We had dispatched 7 by the time we reached the second floor. The volume of Lupin suggested that there was a summoning circle somewhere in the building. Billy and I stepped to the side to allow Private Gorman and his fellow private to move past us to dispatch those lupin above the second floor. They would stop at the third floor landing to simply keep watch. The door at the landing was smashed and gone, so Frank simply stepped into the hallway from the stairwell and smacked his shield down and activating shield taunt. A dozen lupin came charging out of all their hiding spots. Seriously, where did they get all these fuckers. It’s like there was a lupin factory in the abyss churning out new yapping demonic wolf men every minute or two. Billy and I Fired our rifles into the crowded mob of lupin. Frank added in shots with his 50 caliber pistol. Three orcs emerged after the lupin; these much bigger problems emerged from a side room at the end of the hallway.

  Bill, Frank, and I continued to thin the shrinking herd of lupin; Nora shouldered her rifle and pulled out the wand. This tactic entirely depended on us being right about 3 things: the wand being very powerful, orc damage reduction completely negated by Force Bolt, and orcs not having enough health to survive a single use of the wand. I had stopped breathing for a moment as she shouted the newly assigned command word “Pelotudo” for the first time. Five bright red streaks of light shot out of the wand, the clustered up as they punched into the orc’s solar plexus. We all saw the Force Bolts hit the orc, slowing his forward momentum, the bolts continued through it, ripping a near circular whole through the orc. The whole had to be half a foot wide. Blood and gore sprayed the lupin and two orcs behind it. Somehow the orc’s momentum didn’t stop immediately at that point as it still took several more steps before collapsing on the ground crushing a lupin underneath. My lungs began working again as I took a breath. Interestingly, the blood and gore splashing the orcs almost broke the taunt. Their steps faltered for half a second unsure of this new development. They may be dumb, but they had probably seen wands before, and they had at least some sense of their own mortality. The stutter steps ended they resumed their previous pace. Two more “Pelotudos” and the hallway was clear. The last Orc was a half a pace from Frank’s shield when it collapsed.

  “Pelotudo is Spanish for Asshole. Can you say pelotudo children?”

  “Billy!!”