《The Legion of Nothing》Hackjob: Part 8
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When the door opened, we followed a ramp down into the lower level and into the garage.
It didn't look much different than it used to (even if it was bigger), or much different than any underground parking area in the world--concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. The one major difference from most parking garages was fairly easy to notice.
Kid Biohack stopped to stare at one of the corners. "Is that a fireman's pole?"
Set slightly into the wall and enclosed three-quarters of the way around, the pole ran from the floor up to the top of the building. The last section was open and cushioned around the pole.
"Yeah," I stepped out of the van. "Each version of the building has had one."
Kid Biohack said, "Each version?"
"It keeps on getting blown up." I shrugged, though it might have been hard to tell through my armor.
Camille floated the guy on the floor out of the van. He was still unconscious. Travis had put handcuffs on him during the ride. They were new handcuffs made from my design. They adjusted to fit anybody--even people with limited shapeshifting abilities. Marcus could defeat them easily. Haley and Travis couldn't.
As the man floated past Kid Biohack and toward the stairs, Camille looked around the garage. "I was here the last time the Rocket blew it up. It barely looks like the same place."
Kid Biohack stared at me. "You blew it up?"
Not bothering to shrug again, but wanting to, I said, "We were being attacked by people we couldn't beat. I blew up the building with them inside. It was designed to do that."
His eyes widened. "Wait. Is this building designed to do that?"
No one said anything, and we walked up the stairs.
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We walked out onto the first floor. Though Kid Biohack couldn't know it, the decor matched our real, underground headquarters--crimson carpet, bare grey concrete on the walls and around the edges of the rooms. Black chairs and couches stood next to the walls. Darkened transparent aluminum had been used for the windows. We could see out, but people couldn't see in.
"We could do this in the lobby," Vaughn said. "Well, unless you want me to give everyone the tour."
Travis snorted. "Yeah, that's what we need right now. Let's all sit down. Kid Biohack, do you have a way to wake this guy up or do we all have to wait till it wears off?"
Kid Biohack held his hand up to the side of his head and tapped a couple spots above and in front his ear. That struck me as an odd spot to put controls, but I supposed that if it wasn't anything you'd need during combat, it might work.
Moving his hand away from his helmet, Kid Biohack said, "He's about to wake up. I just checked when I knocked him out."
I chose a couch and began to sit down. Haley sat down next to me, but held up her hand to get Camille's attention. "Could you keep him floating and then move back so that the people who are good at hand to hand are closer?"
Camille grinned and took a chair further down the room. Travis' glanced over at Camille, hesitated, but then sat down on the couch across from Haley and me. Kid Biohack sat down on the same couch as Travis, but about as far from him as he could, and probably only because Vaughn had already taken the other nearby chair.
A moan and then a series of coughs came from the floating guy, and then he leaned forward, stretching out with his hands to reach the ground.
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This went as well as one might expect in zero gravity. He flipped over however many times it took for Camille to get tired of it.
On the third or fourth time around, he flipped upright and stayed that way.
I wished he had an actual costume or no costume. It would have made the whole thing feel less weird. A blue t-shirt and Detroit Tigers running shorts couldn't be considered a costume but the mask put it halfway there. Also, it was weird, or maybe strangely practical. It did cover most of his face, and to be fair, it did hide his face.
I couldn't say anything for sure about him beyond that he was around college age, and he had hairy legs.
The man took a look around the room, and then looked up at the walls where one side showed pictures and articles about the history of the original Heroes' League and the other showed pictures of us.
"Oh, shit," he said, holding his hands up to the sides of his head. "Shit."
Travis said, "That's right. We caught you. We know you're involved with Syndicate L and with the group who are robbing armored cars around here. We're going to ask you some questions, and we'll know if you lie. Let's get started. Do you get in touch with the robbers or do they get in touch with you?"
The man shook his head. "I can' t tell you that. Syndicate L said they'd go after my parents or worse if I told anyone what I was doing."
Haley listened with her eyes closed, and only opened them as he stopped talking. "I think they contact him, and that he's telling the truth about his parents."
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Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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