H.E.R.O. - Horde (2 page)

The gazer carefully positioned the tool in his right claw, reached through the grate and began taking out the screws.  I was amazed at how adept he was at it.  The only other time he appeared to be so good at something was when he was drawing something he'd seen, and then I couldn't deny his skill.

In a minute or so he'd withdrawn both screws.  They stayed attached to the end of the tool - it must have been magnetic.  He held onto the grate to keep it from falling and carefully pulled it back into the pipe at an angle and set it down.  I poked my head out and looked down into the club.

We were over a large room.  A stage was off to our left, with a band playing some pleasantly creepy music, much like I'd expect to hear in a dark thriller game.  There was a fair sized crowd sitting at tables in the room, of course they all appeared human - or mostly so.  Elves, dwarves, orcs and other creatures I was used to in my games, but not mutants.  It did look much like a gathering of vampires, however, and that was interesting to watch.  Normally I'd have been luring them out through the door and gunning them down with a crossbow cannon and a group of adventurers.

It was hard to tell the mutants from the posers.  Many people had unusual eye colors or shapes, but those with black claws were probably real.  The posers appeared to affect metal claw things they stuck over their fingers.

Duff tapped me with a crab claw and pointed off to the right.

He said, "Kar hide der.  Duff go sneaky."

At that, he slowly faded from view.  I snorted, pulled my wings in tight and crept out of the pipe.  It was a pipe system hanging well above the floor by occasional cables.  I crawled on top of it and snuck along it, watching the crowd.

A few times someone's eyes would shine more than most, and I saw them looking right up at me.  In those cases, I flattened my long body against the pipe and drew my wings tight as well, hoping they weren't looking at me.  A few continued staring my way for a while, although none appeared concerned that I was there.

I studied all of the faces, searching for the mutants on Rayna's hit list.  While wandering around on the top of the pipe I walked into a spider web.  Bleck - the stupid stuff stuck all over my fur.  Sadly, I wasn't able to find the spider to munch on.  It was like an old trap left in a forlorn dungeon, yet once I made it past the trap all the phat loot was already gone.

Occasionally a new group of people would come into the club.  Perhaps I'd make Duff draw pictures of many of the people in here, contact a game company and have them make a vampire cult based off these people.  I was getting bored, though.  It was a strong temptation to pull out my cell phone and play the little dungeon crawl game I'd downloaded a few days prior.  At least then, I'd get phat loot.

After another half hour of waiting and watching, the boredom became too great.  I took out my phone and started up the game.  I made sure to look around on a regular basis, but none of the patrons looked much like Duff's pictures to me.  I quickly made it through several levels of the dungeon in the game, acquiring several hundred gold and some magic items.  It was a lot more progress than I was making in the club. 
Rayna needs to just send Duff on these.  That's what he's for.  I'm more of the 'stay at home and play games' kind of dragon.

I glanced around the room again.  I spotted an interesting mutant - she wore a blood red dress, and a set of thin but long - and many-jointed - group of four legs or arms came out from her sides.  Each was about six feet long and had a nasty finger talon at the tip.  They were definitely real, based on the way they moved at times.  Other humans gave her extra space, barring a male human who also looked to be a mutant - both had a mouthful of sharp pointy teeth and odd eyes for human types.  Hers were more interesting - even from the distance I was at, each iris was bright red, and the pupil appeared to have a four pointed star shape.

Hmm, where's Duff?  Stupid gazer is probably sneaking sips from someone's drink at the bar....
  I examined the length of the bar; it was fairly packed with humans and mutants.  There definitely wasn't a spot for me to sneak down and grab a drink of my own. 
Stupid Duff.  Ugh, now I'm thinking like the gazers talk, knock it off Kar.

I turned my attention back to the paused game on my cell phone.  Just then, the door of the club opened and a new group of mutants walked in.  Roughly a dozen came in - what really caught my attention was how similar they all appeared.

They were all dressed completely out of style for this place.  They had jeans and t-shirts with logos on them.  Some had jewelry consisting of leather bands and spikes or studs.  None of their clothing appeared to fit any more, it was stretched to the limit, and in some cases torn along the seams.  Yet another reason I thought it silly to bother wearing clothing.

The strangest thing was that they were uniformly bulky - much like short brick supers.  All had reddish tinged skin and brutish faces.  Rayna mentioned the aliens that had arrived in Metrocity, and that they were all blue-skinned.  I wondered if these might be aliens as well.  Only a very few mutants in the club had odd skin colors, and they didn't match the general appearance of each other.  These mutants - or aliens - all had the same general appearance.  They reminded me of humans - most had very similar appearances in my eyes, with slight variations.  These were more like game characters - in fact, I thought they looked a lot like a horde of red orcs from a medieval game.

The reactions of the townsfolk in the bar were not positive.  It was as if the horde guys had a different faction than the goth-oriented people in the club, and a fight was about to start up.

The group barged in, one elbowed a human standing just off to the right near the entrance.  The human and his two friends had been standing around a tall table.  The victim was knocked up into the air and over the table and into his far friend just from the elbow, and it didn't even look like a full attack by the horde guy. 
Ooh, that had to be a critical hit.

The entire group began grabbing and throwing the Goth people away from them.  Bodies flew a good ten to fifteen feet before crashing into others.

They finally reached someone who appeared to be a genuine Goth mutant, for he easily arm blocked a one-armed shove from a horde guy and slammed his other palm into the hordie's chest.  The hordie flew back about ten feet, bouncing off his buddies on the way back.  They were obviously quite strong, because I believed a normal human would also have been knocked down had a fellow human been tossed into them.

The other four bulky humanoids jumped on the mutant and began beating him down.  It got very violent very quickly.

I reluctantly exited my game and called Rayna.

She answered, "Hi fuzzy, what'chya got?"

I said, "Were all of the aliens you saw blue?  There's a group of humanoids in here that look a lot like orcs or bugbears."

"No, they were all blue.  They are green or brown?"

"The humanoids have reddish skin tones, so neither."

"And they aren't just normal mutants?"

"Human mutants never look quite the same.  These all look extremely similar - as if someone designed a base model in a game and then just tweaked the small things, like teeth, hair, and so on.  Oh, and they are all wearing clothes that don't fit in."

"Yeah, this is a Goth club, Kar, so everyone tends to wear clothes that look kind of vampiric."

"I know that, Rayna.  These are wearing blue and black jeans, t-shirts with logos, and spiked jewelry with lots of leather."

"Okay.  Do any of them look like the guys Duff drew pictures of?"

"Rayna, these came in and started fighting the Goths.  They are a different faction, when they entered fighting ensued."

"Really?  How many of these humanoids are there?"

"Perhaps a dozen.  They are much stronger than a normal human, and can take more damage as well - the fight is escalating quickly."

"Crud, that's got to be a big ... oh no, I see that the people standing out in front were beaten up.  They had to have done that quickly for us not to notice."

"Are you on the rooftop playing games?"

"No ... uh, why would you say that?"

"You made us come in here to watch for you and you're just playing games?  I could be on the couch right now!"

"Sorry - never mind that right now, Kar.  Is anyone getting hurt?"

"Of course they are, a full blown PvP melee has begun.  Bodies are flying everywhere."

"Gah, I need to call in some additional heroes, then.  I don't have anything with me to fight many supers.  Are you and Duff safe?"

"Yup.  I'm up on a duct.  I don't know where Duff is - I'm pretty sure he's sneaking sips out of drinks on the bar."

"Okay … what?  Nevermind, I need to get calls out."

She hung up on me.  I went back to watching the fight.  The humans who weren't mutants appeared to be fleeing to the exits or the far sides for those dumb enough to stick around and watch.

The mutants were faster in general, and those with claws or other weapons were tearing apart a few of the horde.  However, the horde guys appeared to have some kind of skin armor that reduced the damage per attack of the mutants, and the fact that they stuck together in a group allowed them to gang up on each mutant that attacked them.

They were stronger than the mutants they faced as well, and having three or four of them grabbing and beating on each mutant had the Goth crowd in disarray.  The horde guys had to be racking up faction points for themselves.  I was somewhat jealous.

It appeared that the patrons of the club weren't combatants, either.  One or two of them used an occasional cool fight move like in one of my combat games, but in general, they used basic punches, kicks and slashes with their claws or bladed hands.  In addition, most didn't get involved in the fight, and stood back watching to see if anyone else would stop the horde.

I saw three of them rush the Spider Queen woman.  Only one male stayed near her.  He went into a defensive pose, and body blocked one of the horde rushing forward.  He had spikes coming off every joint on him, and used them as he put his shoulder and elbow forward.

The spider woman stood tall, she had a sneer on her face as the men moved at her.  The four spider legs lanced forward at the two of them.  The left two stabbed into one of them and halted his progress.  One of the right claws missed, and the other merely grazed his torso.

The one she didn’t attack tackled her to the ground like a linebacker on one of the football games I played.  He slammed his shoulder into her torso, stunning her for a few seconds.  His friend pulled himself off the spider leg barbs while she was down.  The tackler began punching her in the face.  I felt the vibration of each hit even up above the room as I was.  It irked me that I didn’t have a controller to make the Goth people fight how I wanted, they weren’t very good at this.

On the far side of the room, a single mutant fended off four of the horde on his own.  He was so much faster than the Horde people that they couldn't get a solid hold on him, but he had to spend his time in defensive mode to prevent those behind him from grabbing him rather than get a good attack on one.  It was easy to see the bonuses he was receiving from staying in defensive mode the way he twirled and weaved between them.

I saw a flash of color at the door, and a huge human in a clown costume stepped in and looked around - I recognized him as Zonk - a brick whose tight costume was bright yellow and purple on the right arm and left leg.  The left arm and right leg were dark blue and lime green, and the torso was bright red with colorful stars all over it.  He wore white and blue tennis shoes, white gloves and oversized glasses, and had a row of pouches attached to the costume on each thigh.  His brown hair was puffy and wild looking.

I'd seen him on the news now and then - he was a member of H.E.R.O.  His head stopped when he saw the pair beating on the spider queen mutant.  He leaped toward them, landing just behind the two horde guys.

One pulled back his right fist to punch the mutant again when the clown hero reached out and grabbed the hordie's fist.  The alien mutant spun and punched the hero in the chest with his left hand.  The fist sank in an inch or so, but it didn't bother the superhero in the least, in fact, he simply made an odd sound - almost as if he'd struck rubber.

Zonk said, "Bowowow.  Fail."

He then punched the hordie in the chin.  The male flew along the length of the bar, knocking down every chair as he flew completely across the bar section and slammed against the far wall with a resounding crash.

As he flew the hero said, "KaBAM!  You next, fugly!"

The other hordie looked back at him and kicked at the colorful super.  Zonk didn't move as the man's foot slammed into his shin.  His shin moved a few inches.

Zonk made an unhappy face and said, "Bongong.  So sad."

Then he punched down at the hordie, who put up his right arm to block the attack.  The thudding and following cracking sound was far louder than the hits the hordies had been doing to some of the mutants.  The hordie bounced back against the floor just to the right of the spider queen.

The hero cheered, "KaBLAM ... and the crowd goes wild!"

The spider queen shook her head and stabbed toward her left at the hordie still fighting with her defender guy.  One of her leg claws had been snapped and just banged off the hordie's side.  The other stabbed into his thigh.  It distracted the hordie enough for her male companion to punch the hordie and knock him back a few feet, still with the leg stabber in him.

He looked down at his leg, but then Zonk grabbed him by the face with his left hand, and with his right slapped the guy on the back of the head.

The hero apparently had a thing for shouting as he hit someone, for he said, "POW!" as he hit the alien mutant.

The slap stunned the humanoid for a moment, giving Zonk time to kick his feet out from under him and then slam the hordie with a fist in the chest.  The creature banged down into the floor with massive force, smashing apart the flooring material.