Bodies in the street, sprawled where they finally fell. The doors of their shanties yawning wide open, letting in the chill and whatever else wants to wander inside. Trash everywhere; plastic shanks abandoned in the dirt; bows and arrows, too. As the sun sets, no one comes to light the lamps and lanterns and the town falls under complete darkness.

A dog licks the ear of a man who has collapsed face-down in the thoroughfare.

“Mmm, Mary,” he moans, “baby lemme sleep five more minutes – gotta recharge before we go for Round Two.”

This isn't a massacre except by alcohol. Most every adult in town took the opportunity to blow off some steam, and now their snores can be heard all over.

“This is becoming a pattern.” Darby plucks toothbrush shanks from the road and puts them in his sack. “Picking up after our parents.”

Bach—laying in the road drunk—laughs.

“You hear that?” he asks.

“What is it?” Little Cobra cocks his ear.

“Sounds like.... growling?” Ava guesses. Her heart sinks. “Wait, are those.... engines?”

“Yeah, that's gonna be H.R..” Bach grunts as he climbs to his feet. He's wobbly; doesn't bother with dusting himself off. “Makes perfect sense. Never was any profit in killing these people – but selling them?”

“How much time do we have?”

“Not enough. You kids better hide.”

But of course they don't hide. The Slaps rush around trying to rouse their drunken adults as the rumble of the engines edges nearer. And soon they smell the gasoline fumes – an alien odor in this neck of the woods.

Ava's heart hurts. The grownups are collectively too drunk to get up and fight. They stagger about languid, struggling to collect their weapons, fumbling spears and arrows and shanks. Many are too drunk to be awakened at all. Once again the Slaps will have to fight their parents' fight for them.

The Battle of Cripple Creek, is what her quest had called it.

“We've already completed this quest,” Ava prays beneath her breath.

From the lookout perch at the main gate it's clear this isn't the entire caravan coming for them. There's a pair of binoculars hung from a peg here and Bach takes them up to glass the distant rumbling.

“Tough to see in the dark – but this isn't Big Traffick, at least. Looks like they've just sent us a squad of Body-Snatchers.”

“How many do you see?” Ava squints but can't identify anything except the dim glow of their headlights.

“No telling.” He lowers the binoculars but keeps on peering straight ahead. “But they have a tank.”

“A tank!”

“A motor home outfitted with armor and artillery.” He lifts the binoculars and glasses the darkness some more. “And could be a dozen more on motorcycles. Hell, could be two dozen. An accurate count isn't possible in these conditions.”

“What should we do?”

“We should run,” he says, “hide out in the woods until they're done.”

“When you say 'done,'” Ava concludes, “you mean 'done kidnapping everybody in town.' Don't you?”

“Probably, yes.”

“Let me see those binoculars.” He hands them over and Ava takes a look. It's all just a bunch of headlights. But then for a moment she can make out the shadows of prisoner carts like animal cages for a roadside circus.

And she catches a glimpse of a motorcycle with its sidecar and its passenger wielding one of the long, steely jousting lances – does she remember seeing a stack of those in the foundry back in the mine?

Bach swigs from his flask and asks, “so what's the plan?”

Ava can only think about all those prisoner carts.

“Ellie,” she says, “she and Uri are at the healer's hut. She's still blind. We can't let them take her – and if anyone survives this night it seems likely they're gonna need the healer's hut in working order, too.”

“Alright then.” Bach tucks his flask away and awkwardly takes up his spear, forced to wield it with his non-dominant hand.

By the time Ava and Bach join Uri in the healer's hut the laughing voices of the Body-Snatchers can be heard echoing out in the woods. The intruders pause to reform their ranks, having tripped one of the booby-traps.

“Hey hold up,” one of them can be heard shouting, “Chuck's dead! Run through with a spike or I don't know—just some kinda fuckin' trap—took him right off his bike. Man, it smells like shit out here.”

“Gottem,” says Bach.

Ava turns to Uri and asks, “Ellie's safe?”

“Safe as any of us. Irina is with her in the backroom.”

Then from the forest there comes the high-pitched ululation of the Body-Snatchers' battle-cry. And in the next moment Ava flinches as the artillery launches its first shot and the raid is on. Somewhere out there the palisade has been blown to smithereens and now the motorcycles roar into town, tossing crude incendiary devices without discrimination.

And right away the town is being outright torched. It's simple when every structure is stick-built; when for lack of trowels nothing has been constructed of bricks in many years. And suddenly Ava is receiving updates:

>>>>The [Public House] has been reduced to Level Zero(Inoperable).

She has to wonder how many died inside without ever even coming to from their drunken slumbers. Another notification informs her that the schoolhouse has also been 'reduced to level zero' – and what does that mean for Miss Sessions? Did she make it out alive?

She and Bach and Uri hunker in the office of the healer's hut. And here comes trouble: a motorcycle with sidecar and the passenger with his jousting spike and also chucking molotiv cocktails into houses as they scream past.

“They're coming for us.” Uri nocks an arrow.

“I'll draw their attention,” says Bach, “you two do your best to fend them off.”

And before they can flesh out the plan any further he leaps and crashes out through the window, roaring. The Body-Snatchers' eyes shine in the fire. Do they recognize him or has he simply executed a successful [Taunt]? Ava isn't sure – she was too distracted in the moment to notice.

Uri sends a [Fire Arrow] whistling out through the broken window but it deflects harmlessly off the motorcycle's armored shield. And right about then Ava sure wishes she had some bullets for the gun on her hip but the [Crude Bow] and her plastic-tipped arrows will have to do.

She sends an [Aimed Shot] sailing for the driver of the motorcycle and it thwaps into his chest. He jerks but keeps control of the bike – his armor has saved him from any meaningful injury.

And they're close now – the passenger aims to skewer Bach with his long spike but he sidesteps the attack like a bullfighter and with his single hand seizes and twists the lance from its wielders' grip.

The bike becomes unbalanced and crashes, skidding on its side before slamming into the healer's hut—crashing clean through the wall—and Uri is forced to dive out through the window to avoid being crushed. Ava goes the other way, leaping back further into the apothecary's office, barely managing to escape the demolition.

Suddenly the debris has separated her from Bach and Uri—they're outside, fighting the driver in the street—but the passenger is in here with her and it doesn't look like the crash has harmed him at all. He stands and dusts himself off and grins.

“Alright, girly,” he says, “you just come with me and nobody has to get hurt.”

She doesn't respond with any words. She's not having any pre-fight banter. Nocking and drawing an arrow feels too time-consuming so instead she steps forward and unfurls a [Roundhouse Kick] to his gut. It lands and the Body-Snatcher stumbles backward, wind knocked-out, and Ava rushes forward to execute [Intimidate]:

>>>>YOUR Strength is TOO LOW to execute this ability.

Well that's not good. She finds herself flat-footed after failing to perform the [Intimidation] and her opponent takes advantage. He's quick. He pulls a hunting knife with a serrated blade and flicks out a swift, horizontal cut:

>>>>YOU have suffered a Minor Injury to your TORSO(2 wounds)

The knife slices through her shirt and into her side and the pain is the worst she's ever known. But she can't succumb to it. There's still a fight to survive. He turns the knife in his hand and thrusts it for her midsection once more but she manages to spin out of the way—and for a moment she can breathe, relieved—but then she realizes too late that he still has 2AP remaining:

>>>>YOU have suffered a Minor Injury to your RIGHT ARM(2 wounds)

The knife rips a gnarly gouge in her bicep and all at once she realizes she's suddenly down to her last Wound. If this Body-Snatcher strikes her just one more time she is going to die. There's really no choice anymore, her only option is to execute an [Overload].

The motor growls within her, rising in intensity. She grabs his forearm with her zapping hand and his eyes widen from fear. He hadn't noticed he was fighting some kind of child cyborg – he thought he was simply murdering a little girl.

“That's right,” she growls as the electricity begins to consume them both, “you're fuckin' cooked.”

And the tempest explodes there in the half-demolished healer's hut. The Body-Snatcher convulses violently and she does not release his arm. Instead she maintains her grip the entire time, well past the point when he's already dead; past when he's crumpled to the floor; past even when he's becoming charcoal in her fist.

Encounter Defeated!

Experience Gained: 200

>>>>The [Healer's Hut] has been reduced to Level Zero(Inoperable).

Goddammit, she curses, gritting her teeth and finally releasing the Body-Snatcher's scorched corpse. Now he's just a torso for the most part – his arms completely disintegrated and his face skeletal. Smoke spooking up from his empty eye-sockets.

And seeing the gruesome result of her rage makes Ava's ears ring. Her stomach flips and she might barf. She looks around the healer's hut and realizes – she's gone and cooked all the herbs and ointments and mossy compresses.

She's gone and accidentally destroyed Irina's entire stock of healing supplies.

Uri pokes his head inside through a break in the rubble and asks, “you okay in here?”

Pretty soon the space trash stops sparkling. There's just too much light pollution from all the structure fires. And too much smoke. The Body-Snatchers pillage efficiently. Practice-makes-perfect and they're already pulling out of town.

There's no one left to stop them because Ava and Bach and Uri hole-up in what remains of the healer's hut. They still have Ellie to protect, after all – but there are screams outside, coming from every direction. Screams they can't answer. Folks they can't save.

The carts are rolling out, loaded with prisoners. Loaded with product. Ava sees one full of kids. Full of Slaps. She watches while Cobra is scooped up by the scruff and tossed inside.

“No!” she screams, “we have to stop them!”

But it's too late. The engines rev and the Body-Snatchers exit.

Ava rushes outside and surveys the damage. Every structure seems to be smoldering. Parents weep in the road. And Horst wins without lifting a finger.

She can't help but wonder, what was the point of all this?

She did her part. Completed her quest. And she still lost.

They still lost.

Is this part of the game? Is she supposed to feel hopeless, like all of her actions have no point? Does someone want her to just give up?

And then she fathoms something for the first time:

What if the deus ex machina I've trusted to save the day doesn't exist? What if it's really—

“Diabolos ex machina,” she whispers so only the ruins can hear.