With the idea that several world altering weapons may still be in play now around, the amount of resources and people at their disposal multiplied exponentially. Sarah had been working the job on her own for the most part, with other people coming on temporarily as needed. Apparently, Matt thought as he watched people scurry around with arm loads of papers, this was one of those times.

As people went over all the information, it seemed at first like he’d missed dozens of locations, which was a surprisingly heavy blow to his self esteem. He’d wondered about his choice of actions a lot, questioning whether he’d made the right choice, or whether it had been his choice at all. But at no point during that time had he doubted that he’d done it well. Seeing a bunch of people looking through his failures and mistakes was...humbling, to say the least.

But as more details came to light, and things were checked out in greater detail, not all of his so called mistakes had actually been failures. They’d just turned out a little different than expected.

“Coastal city of Quenar? Says here there should have been a tidal wave to wipe it out.” Said one of the techs, reading off a list they’d put together.

Another checked their notes. “Mmm...looks like it went off but they had measures in place for those, and they ruled it as a natural one.”

“Okay, I’ll mark that one off, how about the mountain city of Nix? Did we get a collapse under the place?”

“Looks like we did but... oh man...”

“Problems?”

“The collapse went as expected, but the city held up, leaving us with a pretty damn huge cave underneath it.”

“Doesn’t really sound like a problem.”

“It isn’t by itself, but the cave has become a sealed dungeon, and a high level one at that. It gets cracked open and we’re looking at a major incursion.”

Another programmer stuck their head around the corner. “Exactly how big are we talking?”

“We’d need to run the numbers, but I’d say at least a national situation, though if it’s left long enough it might end up being international.”

The programmer scratched their head and shrugged. “Get me the numbers and I’ll manage it. We can put a few rumours of treasure or loot buried under the town out on some of our false media accounts, then we can lure in a player to crack it open. They can take the blame and fame of unleashing it, and we can run it as an event to get more interest in those mountains.”

“Fair enough, it’s your problem now. Next on this list...”

They continued on for over an hour, going over every place that hadn’t had a confirmed hit, looking over the records in detail. In the end there were only three recorded failures, the rest being labelled as misses. With most of the work done, Sarah had the rest of them head back to their own stations, leaving only the two of them and one of the head programmers, a man in his late thirties who introduced himself as James.

“Nice to meet you James. So where do we stand?” Matt asked, trying to make sense of the various documents the man had lain out before him.

The programmer pulled out a few sheets from the array on the table, and pointed to a few key details.

“Well,” he began. “There are a few things, but most have pretty much taken care of themselves or aren’t going to be an issue anytime soon, so here are the big ones. You’ve got a couple of... frankly ridiculously large seismic charges buried in the cliffs that hold up the coastal town of Grey Shore. When detonated they should have broken off about a two mile wide section of stone, leaving the place to slide into the underwater crevasse nearby.”

“That was the plan,” Matt admitted. “So what went wrong?”

“We aren’t sure exactly, but our best guess is something disrupted the signal, so we’re going to try and have a few people try and quietly remove the charges before anyone even realises there’s a problem. The next one is a little more complicated, but might have a very simple solution.”

Grabbing out another page, he showed them a city, its bright green banners sitting on the walls, reminding Matt of his plans for that particular place.

“The Verdant Keep? There should have been a super charged seed that would have grown and swallowed up the whole place. Did it not get triggered either?”

“No, this one definitely went off, although it was a day or so behind everything else, but I really hope you’ve studied up a little more on plants for your new works than you did with these. I could follow what you’d planned from your notes, but rather than going up it decided to grow down, in a big way.”

“What do you mean exactly that it grew down?”

“Currently on the surface there’s a small tree, maybe a dozen feet tall with incredibly bright green leaves, growing in the middle of one their sacred glades. Underneath it has a complex root system that stretches out for a minimum of forty three miles in every direction, and has latched on to every other bit of vegetation in the area. And thanks to the games AI deciding that power scales with size to a degree, this network has achieved a near demigod like state, with a fairly active response to anyone crossing it. We’ve got some footage of shortly after it had sprouted.”

Grabbing a tablet, he brought up a video taken from an NPC’s point of view. A player had entered the glade, expecting a clear empty field, and paused when they saw the tree growing from the centre, they turned away to ask someone a question, but they were too far away to make out the words. Shrugging they walked up to the tree and pulled a small axe from their inventory and made a few gesture, apparently trying to get rid of the unwanted plant. The next piece of the footage would have been to blurry to see, but someone had taken the time to slow down and clean up the video. Before the axe had touched the bark of the tree, a root had shot from the ground with snake like speed, and wrapped around the persons neck before they could even recognise the danger. Despite being no thicker than a pencil, it apparently had the strength to not only drag his head back towards the ground, but force his head and upper torso through the hard ground, leaving Matt happy that the video hadn’t been able to pick up the sounds of the poor persons bones breaking under the pressure. Things only got worse after that, as a strange noise filled the air from seemingly every direction, and the entire glade erupted into a sea of the same whip like roots that shot towards the sky, except for one which made a beeline straight for the poor NPC who’d taken this footage. Everything went black for a moment, and then the video picked back up again, sped back up to normal with a message saying it was from a different character. The glade was back on screen, but there had been a horrifying change.

The once green field was stained red, and filled with bodies, a sea of twisted arms and legs, jutting from the churned up ground. There was carnage throughout the whole glade, even the walls surrounding it were cracked and bloodied, yet the tree itself was unmoved. It remained untouched in the centre of its horrific harvest, not a speck of blood marring its emerald leaves.

“Oh my God, that’s nasty.” Sarah said, looking a bit pale.

“It took out more than three quarters of the city before it calmed down.” He said as he stopped the video.

“What made it stop?”

“Nothing really, it just ran out of nearby targets, then had a few hours to calm down.”

Matt looked at the now blank screen. “So what’s it doing now?”

“When no one goes and bothers it, not much. As long as no plants are damaged within around three hundred yards of it, it sits around and acts like a, well, tree. But the few times someone’s messed around closer than that it had a fit similar to the first one. Still, as things go it’s not too big a problem and some people have already started to try and cast spells through it.”

“They’re using it? How does that work?” He asked.

“I'm happy to say that since I'm on the event team, I have no idea. All of the magical programming was done by another group entirely, but from what I’ve been told they’re using its roots as way of broadcasting nature based spells through the area. Its letting them do some pretty crazy stuff, but nothing too extreme yet, which is where you come in.”

“What, you want me to poison it or...”Matt asked, thinking about possible solutions.

“Nothing nearly that complicated, all we need is your permission.”

“...My permission? How’s that going to help solve anything.”

“It’s actually pretty simple. “ Sarah said while pulling out her phone. “We’re pretty limited in what we can change without the lawyers getting involved, but one of the few things we can mess with is storylines, so that we can try to have things actually progress as a game. There are some extra hoops to jump through for any player created items, or in this case life, but we can get around the AI limits by getting your permission for us to work on it.”

“Sure, I guess?” Matt said, scratching his head.

“Right then!” James said, sounding relieved. “I’ll have someone get the paperwork delivered and we’ll upload the required information. Now, on to the biggest problem.”

Turning back to the tablet, he swiped across it and opened up a different file, this one bring up a clip of an asteroid travelling through a starlit void.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks a little bigger than what your notes suggest.” Sarah said, squinting at the screen, to which Matt had to agree. The lump of rock and metal tumbling through space should have been large, but large compared normal things, like trees and hills. The mass lazily falling towards them was instead comparable to a continental plate, and may as well have the words “Extinction event” printed on it in bright red letters.

“We’ve done the math,” James said, snapping their attention back to him. “And from what we can gather, it looks like a decimal point got shifted in your calculations somewhere for the scale. That leaves us with a meteor 100 times bigger than planned for, but fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, it also started out a hundred times further away. You didn't give it any real momentum, relying on gravity to do the work for you, which means we’ve still got some time to sort this out. But by the time it does hit the atmosphere it's going to be carrying enough force that we might as well do a hard reset of the world.”

“Why not just delete it while it's still far away?” Matt asked, looking for a simple solution.

“Partly the same reason we needed your permission to make changes to the plant, but the main issue is scale. Little things, like an image here or a bit of stonework there, we can change with no problem, its necessary to keep the game functional. But when we start looking at the bigger things, it gets harder, since the game’s AI releases that information to the public.”

“What’s the point of that?”

The programmer sighed. “People and business started getting worried that we were secretly giving an advantage to their competitors, though considering some of the people we work for, can’t say it was unfounded. But now we’re stuck with a piece of code that any changes we make completely transparent, so just deleting it isn’t on the table.”

“Why not? If people hear that you stopped something from wiping everything out then-”

“Then they’ll complain that we didn’t stop the destruction before, and we’ll run into more law suits than we can deal with. Legal’s already ran the numbers, and they judge it’d be cheaper to just let it hit.”

“Then why don't we just let it hit then?” Matt asked, looking for a simple solution.

“Because there’s a big difference between cheap and cheaper. We don't deal with this and the companies going to end up in rough shape.” Sarah said.

“And that would be my problem because...?” Matt asked, raising an eyebrow. “It’s not like I’m going struggle to sleep at night if August goes bankrupt.”

Sarah raised one back. “Because you’re a good person and want to do something nice for others? But more seriously, I doubt he’d hesitate to drag you down with him if he goes under.”

Thinking about it, Matt nodded in agreement. The man looked like he’d been losing it the last time he’d seen him, and it probably wouldn’t take much of a push to put him over the edge.

“Fine, so it’s my problem too, but how do we go about solving it then? I can’t think of anything off the top of my head to get rid of an incoming meteor.”

Sarah and James looked at each other awkwardly before James cleared his throat. “Well, you see,” He began. “There kind of... isn’t one.”

“That we know of.” Sarah said quickly. “But new items and spells are always being made or found these days, so I’m sure there’s something out there that can work.”

“So just to be clear here, you expect me to...what? Wander the game world on my own until it hits, hoping I luck my way into finding an answer?” He exclaimed in disbelief.

It was James’s turn to look disbelieving. “The executives have dropped some resources into managing your situation, but this is a lot bigger than just you. We’re getting every asset we can manage to look into solutions for this mess you’ve created.”

With the discussion over, Matt was sent home with instructions to check around Macross to see if he could find the actual triggering device, since it could help them get some control over the oncoming destruction. Other than that he was just told not to spread rumours about it and that they’d be in touch. It wasn’t the clearest goal he’d ever had, but from looking at everyone racing around the office as he was leaving, he knew it was all he was going to get. Driving back he considered his plan of attack, and what his options were. In a perfect world, the device would be exactly where he’d left it, untouched and unnoticed by everyone, though he’d need to double check his notes to remember where it was exactly. But he hadn’t expected for any of his work not to go off properly in the first place, so he didn’t have high hopes.

Opening his door, he went to the kitchen to grab something to eat before settling in for another session, knowing that he was looking at some long hours ahead of him. But when he sat down to eat the bowl of noodles he’d made, he found a single sheet of paper sitting on the table in front of him. On it there was a detailed picture of the asteroid in space, and a single line of text underneath.

“Fix it or be held accountable. We will be watching you. The work must continue.”

Staring at the paper, his mind raced as the food fell from his fork. The company had only just discovered that the meteor existed, yet someone had already had time to break into his home and drop off... a message? A warning? What exactly was this? Whatever it was, it seemed to be from the same source as the email August had gotten that had started to drive him nuts. Who exactly was pulling the strings on him now? For now though it didn’t really matter, since for once everyone seemed to be pulling him towards the same goal: to save the world from himself.

~~~~~~

Dropping back into the game with his new mission firmly in mind, he was prepared to get things underway, only to quickly realise that he had no idea where he was. A person's return point should be the same as the one the one they logged out from, but apparently the notch he’d put in Hermes’ shell was substantial enough to count as a dwelling and could move without him being there. So instead of appearing on the riverbank as expected, with the sun shining off the water, he found himself struggling to stay upright in Hermes’ shell, as the giant crab bolted through a forested area

Fallen logs, shrubs and smaller trees were thrown out of the way, the crustaceans momentum too much for simple foliage to even slow it down. Shielding his face from branches that whipped past, Jicker tried to look out and see where they were, and more importantly, why they were running. He’d told his new mount to leave if it thought it had to, and apparently that need had come up, although it had also thought it needed to retreat from small birds. He was about to order it to stop running away so he could see what the problem was, when he heard horns and baying of hounds behind them.

“Keep going, I’ll see what I can do.” He called out to Hermes, not that it really changed anything. The crab was built for endurance rather than speed, but was currently pushing itself to the absolute limit at the moment. Carefully, he stepped out of the notch and gripped the shell tightly before beginning to inch his way around. After being struck by a few errant branches he made his way to the other side, and got a look at what exactly had driven his mount into a run.

Behind them, racing through the undergrowth in hot pursuit, were riders. Dozens of figures on horseback, led by line of dogs, wolves and other hunting animals that, now that he could get a proper look of them, had weapons drawn and pointed towards them. As an arrow broke against the shell next to him, he started shouting back at the riders.

“What the hell are you doing? Stop attacking me!” he called, hoping this was something he could solve with words, not liking his chances of winning a fight at twenty to one odds. Fortunately, someone had either heard or seen him, and called for people to stop firing and call the dogs off, though it may have come to late. A final volley of both arrows and magical attacks arced towards them resulting a wave of flame that set the trees ablaze as it crashed down towards him.

As his life, or at least his day flashed before his eyes, Hermes shifted suddenly beneath his feet, making him lose his balance and throwing him to the ground. While losing his senses slightly as his head struck the earth, he quickly realised that while he was sore, and there had definitely been a flash of light and heat, he was still very much alive. Looking up, he saw that Hermes, having carved large furrows in the soft soil of the forest in order to come to a dead stop, had stood over him blocking the majority of the attack with its wide, durable claws, the rest making no real impact against the creatures solid shell. Getting to his feet, he patted the crab on its leg, immediately glad in his decision to go with toughness and endurance over power and agility.

“You there!”

Turning, Jicker found one of the riders approaching, the others having stopped further back to check over their animals.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? We put out an official claim for this hunt, you can't just come along and try to steal it out from under us, even if you’re willing to get your fool self killed in the process.”

Confused, Jicker turned around looking at the area around them. “What were you hunting?” he asked after a moment, still feeling groggy after his trip to the floor.

The rider just stopped for a moment before removing their helmet, revealing herself to be a tall slender elf. “Are you trying to annoy me,” she said slowly “Or are you actually an idiot.”

“In fairness, my head hurts.”

She sighed. “The damned monster behind you! We’ve been after it for days now, then you jump on it out of nowhere, right in the middle of our attack.”

“Okay, so just to be clear, we’re talking about the big blue crab here, the one I was riding?”

“Obviously, unless you see another giant undiscovered beast around here.”

“The same crab that I found and claimed as a mount about… time is difficult, but I want to say about four days ago?”

“You got anything to back up that claim?” she asked unhappily, gritting her teeth.

“I’ve got the claim marker right here if you've got someone with you who can appraise it if you want an exact time.” he said, offering her the slate disc to look at.

Looking a mixture of rage and acceptance, she took a long, slow breath before turning back to the rest of her group. “Mack!” She shouted, “Come and take a look at this for me!”

“You think that I’m lying?” Jicker asked, surprised.

She rubbed her eyes before facing him again. “As much I would love it if that were true, I'm pretty sure you’re telling the truth. Still I’ve been ripped off before and I’m not going to take any chances.”

The man she’d called over took a few moments to study the token before exchanging a few words with the woman.

“It’s legit, that things been his for around three and a half days now, which...doesn’t make a lot of sense. Didn't the guild send us out here after that?”

“They did, which means that either someone screwed up and heads are gonna roll, or someone's messing around and they’re going to wish it was just their head.” she grimaced before taking on a more friendly expression. “Sorry about all of this, but we’d been going off of what our info had told us, that this was an unrecognized, and more importantly unowned creature. Anyway, name’s Harriet, and on behalf of the Emerald Riders guild, I apologise for attacking you and your property. I don't suppose you know where we could find another one of those do you? It's not the best manners I know, but we’re on a job to bring this thing in, so if we can't at least find a substitute, we’re going to have to declare it a failure.”

Jicker shook his head, a decision he wished he hadn't made, “Sorry, but Hermes here is apparently a unique monster, and I don't plan to get rid of him any time soon. But it doesn't look like any real damage was done to him so I’m willing to let things go at that.”

“Sporting of you.” She said, sounding surprised. “I don't know if I’d be able to say the same in your position. Still we were told to bring that thing back with us, so are you sure we can’t get hold of one? How’d you get yours anyway?”

“Well...” He began, thinking quickly. “There was this old guy who gave me a quest a while ago to investigate some shells around the water back there, and when I finally got around to it one of them rose up and became the Hermes. If you want you could ask him for the quest? He was hanging around the edges of the Blightwoods when I spoke to him a few weeks ago.”

She swore. “Dammit! I take you haven’t been up around there recently? The entire area’s roped off, and anyone who goes in generally doesn’t come back out. Mushrooms pick off anyone who goes in far enough to lose sight of the outside.”

“I’d heard about that, is it really that bad.” Jicker said, hiding his relief. It seemed like she’d bought it.

“It’s not too bad at the edges, but almost no one risks going in further than that, not with the risks.”

“Well, death is always a risk in this game.”

“Death? Nah that’s not too bad, the real problem is-” She stopped herself, a strange expression crossing her face, before turning to the other player. “Mack, that thing is bound to him through the item yeah? Could we take it off him?”

“Wait, what?!” Jicker exclaimed, not liking the sudden change of direction things were taking.

Mack scratched his chin in thought. “Used to be the case, but that got fixed early on after people took control of animal hauling goods. Now it’s set as an extremely rare drop from a person carrying one, so that options off the table.”

“That is yeah, but the mushrooms..?”

Mack looked pained. “It would work, but do we really want to go down that road?”

“I don't know about you, but we’ve been working on this job for days now for a big pay off, and I don't want to go home empty handed.”

“Wait a second, don't I get a say in this?” Jicker asked already knowing the answer.

“Sorry about this.” She said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “But you really don't.”