Rule 13

Beware the Toy Aisle & Strut Effectively

Statement: Side effects were common with every single gift. Figuring out what they were is how I learned to handle other people. But observing another person’s quirks and figuring out how to control my own was difficult.

Did the spells cause side effects as well, or was it something else? Every time I used an explosive, part of me giggled happily. When I used the brown-skinned transformation, my libido ramped up. What would the price of the black light spell be? Maybe they simply made it easier to give in to impulses that were already buried…

I wanted to stab one of the monsters to see how tough they were. It was impossible to properly gauge them based on the group’s performance. Leon’s distracting abilities frequently held monsters immobile until the others got in a few attacks.

We fought more of the foam snakes. Callisto and Leon both huffed heavily by the third wave. The snakes moved and dodged their sluggish swings.

Leon pushed away from the bent framing. “Hate… the toy… aisle.”

“Don’t break them walls!” Allegra’s voice wavered.

“I know,” Leon shouted.

One of the snakes dove for him with its head low along the ground. Leon dodged to the side and lost his footing on a second creature that positioned to trip him. They were getting smarter the more we fought them.

The other two were distracted by a large teddy bear stuffed with bouncy balls. I had no idea what the combination meant, but the balls spilled all over the floor. Callisto cursed as she turned to swipe a snake. The metal clinked and sword spun across the floor.

Post Note: A sadistic mind dreamed this place up. I have to remind myself that the other three preferred this over the meat aisle.

I stepped up while drawing a blade from my belt. It sliced downward in a disturbingly smooth motion. The sort-of-snake’s body gave me a little bit of resistance. Its head curled in my direction and hissed. A dozen baby-sized snakes poured onto my head like writhing confetti with teeth.

“They’re possessed, you see?” Allegra said next to me. Her tone had lifted a few octaves as the fights increased.

Our tank shook. The creature I sawed through yowled again as its body sliced into two chunks. A dozen smaller snakes poured out of its innards and curled upon themselves in death throes. Leon rolled on the floor, fighting with the other half of his enemy’s body.

“No, I don’t! I hate supermarkets. They’re all stupid,” Callisto complained while fighting another two. Her weapon glanced off one of the creatures, tearing only a small chunk out of its tube hide.

Leon rolled on the ground, grunting. His breath came in labored gasps and body flickered weakly with yellow. The ability was a shield of some sort.

“This is our third one, they’re all the same,” Callisto continued as she pushed back another.

My knife clearly worked better than her blades. That bothered me since they were from the kitchen. How a mundane weapon outperformed a honed blade was beyond comprehension.

“Doesn’t matter if you go into a Win Myer or an Albertco, same stuff every time!” Callisto turned to help Leon. “And this is still better than…”

I’d dispatched two more of the snakes. They were easier to kill than the mini-orcs, especially when they focused on other people. The giant teddy bear raised bouncy ball bleeding limbs and loomed over the tank. Each ball that fell bounced twice then exploded into acid.

“How…?” Callisto ignored the impending doom to her companion.

I didn’t want anyone else to die on my watch, not when they could help me survive later on. There were other reasons too, such as having seen too many people die during the event, or not being sure how to get out of this place.

Never mind the fact that they worked with Mayor Kent. The name finally rang a bell, Kent was my dad’s first name. No one ever called him by it, everyone simply said “Mister Underwood.” Mayor had never been part of his name, and part of me worried about getting my hopes up. The rest of me remembered that dad had never called me since the accident, not once.

I ran by their stupefied forms, straight for the giant bear lumbering forward. It provided a squeaky growl that sounded like a broken chew toy. I took a breath and aimed for the back of its legs. It was like the creature couldn’t even tell where I stood.

My knife sank in perfectly but the bouncy balls burst upon contact with my blade’s edge. Sizzling acid ate the metal, I quickly tore my arm left, and grit my teeth to ignore the pain. It hurt. I managed two steps right and used another blade to cut it open.

I shook and reached inside a pocket for two heavy duty painkillers. The wounds would heal quickly, if my prior experiences were anything to judge by, but the pain would turn me dysfunctional. In fifteen minutes or so I’d be riding a cloud.

The other two stared at me with their mouths agape, or more specifically where my skin bubbled. I needed better clothes, or plate armor. Leon glanced at the blade, then back at his armor. There was a long scratch on its side where my blade had glanced off to free him from the tube snake. He ran a finger along the newly formed crack. The rest glowed yellow, which must have somehow prevented the acid from splashing onto him.

“Jesus wept,” he muttered.

“Kent’ll be proud to know his son is a monster too. Look at him, bathing in blood, sort of.” Callisto shook her head and flashed me a wide smile.

I raised an eyebrow, thought wholly uncharacteristic things, such as exactly how she could put that mouth to use, and fingered the last long kitchen knife. She was probably mentally unhinged. There was no blood, only monster parts made out of toys. The dead creatures slowly collapsed into a swath of bright yellow orbs. Dozens came out of each body, far more than the few single mini-orcs I’d taken down.

The other two shook themselves out of their stupor enough to talk.

Allegra whispered, “No newbie should be able to slice through Leon’s shield that easily.” She avoided eye contact with me and walked to the plate wearer. “Are you hurt? I’ll heal you.”

Leon shook his head. “No. We need to finish and get out of here so that Mayor Kent will be happy. It’s our orders.”

“Your orders,” Callisto said. She pulled her clothes into position. The shirt ripped leaving a new hole. She scowled. Two of the extra small dead snakes had their jaws locked around her chain mail, she yanked them off and dropped their bodies onto the ground. They faded away as the other deceased had.

The blond man took a deep breath and shuddered. “We’ve got to bring him back. They’re our orders,” Leon insisted.

“If you say so. I hate this place.” Callisto lifted a chin to Leon. “Tell me we’re making decent money.”

Leon fumbled with his helmet and brought down the visor. “I’m up fifty eight dollars. You?”

She nodded. “About that.”

I didn’t feel comfortable reviewing my card here with these people. Maybe they’d been half in a daze during the line standing event. People had fought each other and stolen money. None of them could be trusted, despite my desire to find a group to feel secure with. I couldn’t figure out who Callisto reminded me of or what caused Allegra to be so aggressively flirty.

“The walls,” Allegra said. Her color had grown pale. She ruffled one of the large parchments in her hands.

Leon huffed and addressed the bathrobe wearing woman, “What?”

“Pull the walls in line! Don’t let them fall back!” Allegra pointed behind me.

Someone cut across the music, saying, “Cleanup, on, two.” With a gargle that made him sound sick. A grunting noise of some hunch backed creature came from the other side of the barricade.

“Hey. You. Thorn. Help!” Callisto shouted.

I wondered how monsters didn’t hear her and come screaming. Maybe the narrow rows that went on forever had something to do with our limited encounters with monsters. The shelves here went up about twenty feet high and were thick. I hadn’t been given enough time to figure out the logic of this place, but if it was like the line from before, it wouldn’t be normal stuff. We were simply facing a new twist on old insanity.

“We’re not ready yet. Not yet…” Callisto muttered. She leaned back, using her weight to pull the shelves upright. Leon lay on the bottom of one of the racks.

I assumed we weren’t ready for the large creature grunting on the next aisle over. It had to be even taller than the barricade. It snorted, sniffed, and mumbled like a teenage male whining.

“Thorn, help keep this wall up. Quickly, before he rounds the corner.” Allegra kneeled over a map on the floor. A clear line of sight down all seven robes made me gulp.

I tore myself away and pulled back on the shelves. They warped a bit and visibly changed. The scarring from the giant bear’s bouncy balls of acid turned into smoothed metal with occasional holes to hang product from.

“Wait for it,” Callisto ordered.

We hung off the walls. Allegra was the first to sigh in relief, right before the intercom cut off a messed up version of Beethoven. “Cleanup canceled.”

“Allie?”

“We’re clear. Two more turns and we can hit the end.”

“Any mobs?”

Mobs was a weird word to use. Callisto must have meant monsters. Allegra’s head shook. Leon took a deep breath but refused to get off the floor.

I said nothing.

“All right. Allie, check over Leon anyway. He’s clearly exhausted.”

“I’m okay. Mayor Kent says we have to avoid wasting resources.” Leon protested and weakly slapped away the healer. He rolled to his side and reached for the sledge hammer.

“Kent’s orders also include staying alive,” Callisto said. Her face pinched and the gesture once against struck me as familiar. I couldn’t picture who’d used that disapproving stare on me before. The hair felt wrong.

Allegra stepped close and laid out a really long piece of paper. Once again pencil markings sketched out a picture, this time of Leon’s body—without the armor. She inspected the results with a bored expression.

She reached into the picture. Her arms turned to pencil lead and slithered along the page. I narrowed my eyes and Callisto stepped between me and Allegra, her hair shook back and forth. I took it as a warning not to get close. Allegra’s drawn arms brushed over jagged spots in the artwork causing it to smooth.

Soon she’d done something, which I didn’t fully understand but watched with great interest. We continued on to the end of the aisle fighting a few more monsters. The others were no longer surprised when the knife made short work of enemies. I was, still.

Leon stood between two exit ends of the aisle under a giant glowing two which was still in English. Callisto kneeled next to him and caught her breath. Allegra walked slower, trusting me to take up the rear. Apparently stabbing six monsters in rapid succession, with ease, had caught their attention.

Post Note: If it had been me, I wouldn’t have let anyone else take up the rear. I would not have trusted a person like myself. I said little, gave away little, and expected nothing in return.

Allegra pushed past the other two. She glared at Leon then elbowed his armor lightly. “Why’re you all hesitatin’?”

I knew why I’d paused. That Frankenstein monster was outright weird. Someone, whatever evil power fueled this entire nightmare, took three versions of a superhero monster on steroids and patched them together. They added a smock, illegible name tag, and an ugly snowman tie. He stood near a beat-up register and wiped the counter while mumbling.

“This one has a cashier,” Leon said.

I’d done a stint working a register to this very same corner market during my teens. It was hard to think about considering how alien the place had become. Eight months of hell that still beat the fast food work before it.

“We’re lucky it’s just a clerk. A friend of mine ran into a night manager at another store. It was terrible. The boss used a coupon scanner to disembowel him,” Callisto said. She stepped back behind Leon. Our tank, such as he was, shuddered.

“I hate being the tank.” He mumbled. “I hate getting hit. I hate monsters.” Leon banged his armored arm with the other fist. The gold aura which let him fight off monsters flickered to life and enveloped his torn up riot shield.

Callisto mocked. “Mayor Kent wants you to keep his baby monster son safe.”

“This’ll be tough,” Leon said.

“We have to do it,” she responded.

Leon frowned. “The last time we lost two people.”

“You said we could do this with a healer.” Callisto looked back at Allegra then toward the giant in front of us.

Allegra frowned but dug through her dwindling pouch. She didn’t seem able to reuse the papers after a picture was drawn and affected.

“She’s the best we have,” Callisto said.

“I know. Mayor Kent said bring him here. I follow orders.” Leon closed his eyes and moved his lips. He lifted the shield and winced. A follow up, much quieter than the first, “That’s all we can do.”

Allegra eye’s briefly tightened, she glanced down and shook her head. She put a hand on Leon’s shoulder and said, “That arm’s almost broken. I mended about half the damage but after the last round, you’re still on threads. Use a potion. We can’t risk you dying here.”

Their talking annoyed me and I’d had a lot of time to reconsider my options. They knew I was good with a knife and that scared them. They were loyal to a man who claimed to be my father. Therefore being more powerful than they expected would help this man who had assisted me. I had to hope they wouldn’t strike me in a moment of weakness either, but they’d dived in front of monsters to keep me alive.

The book’s pages slid open without a sound. I pooled light onto fingertips and charged a spell while the three of them dithered about resources. My head swam for a moment as the world narrowed to a sucking sensation that funneled out of an arm. I managed to shake the spell off onto a tennis ball. This projectile would not survive to be reused, as the prior ones had.

It was no longer worth hiding another ability. Not when there were prizes to be gained. I’d traveled with them for about an hour fighting waves of monsters and creeping along. They believed me to be a monster, and had said so twice.

I would embrace that role but show myself to be on their side. Plus the cashier knew we were here. It frequently looked up at us and muttered uncouth slurs about flaky customers. There was a certain logic to the cashier waiting for us at a register and not aggressively attacking as the toys had.

“Get ready.” I coughed halfway through the words and repeated myself.

“For what?” Callisto asked.

Leon shook his head and automatically stepped forward. He was really good at following orders. Or my status as Mayor Kent’s son, which I was unsure of, put me higher on the chain of command.

Allegra was the only one to turn to me. Her mouth made an ‘o’ shape that almost caused my thoughts to falter. I managed to toss the tennis ball straight for the cashier.

The tennis ball exploded well before reaching the twisted behemoth of a cashier. His body blew to one side, sending him skidding into another register.

Leon turned back at me and nodded. His face looked wet through the eye slits of his helmet, but he ran forward.

“You have grenades? That work?” Callisto asked.

“Go!” Allegra shouted and waved her companion on.

My first two attempts at answering were lies.

“Of a sort,” I said. That was close enough to the truth. The other three were already in battle. I rigged a second tennis ball with my explosive rune.