“I’m sick and tired of walking,” exclaimed Sam.

Jen replied, “I thought you didn’t want to keep one of the wagons and a Bowler Beast?”

“No, I don’t want wagons and oxen. Animals are too much of an upkeep when travelling, and they would only slow us down. I miss driving in an air-conditioned car or truck… with shocks!”

“I forgot how you boomers love your Cadillac sedans. Maybe one day we can…”

“Fuck!”, “Shit!”, “Oof!” Jen, Sam, and Tamako all responded, and less than a second later, “Boom! Crack!” Sam’s AI activated his tattoo responding with a massive lightning attack.

None of them wanted to talk because of the pain moving their mouth would cause, but they could still communicate through their onboards. Jen messaged as she stood completely still, only moving her eyes, “I don’t see anything moving and you may have killed it, but our healing tattoos can’t keep the toxin from spreading for long. We’ve got to remove these ‘porcupine quills’ before we can heal up completely.”

Sam turned his head to look at Jen, and noticed tears streaming down from her eyes’, but he held off on moving his head the additional distance to find out how Tamako was doing, and just messaged everyone, “I'm willing to try and move to get the quills out, but I’m likely to pass out from the pain. How are you doing Tamako?”

There was no answer from Tamako, but a few seconds later, Sam and Jen heard a gasp of pain, and Tamako rasped a reply, “I’m coming.”

As Tamako entered Jen’s field of view, Jen noticed dried blood around multiple healed puncture wounds, and that Tamako was swaying in either pain or dizziness, or both. Jen’s AI immediately informed her that Tamako was still trying to cure the poison running through her body.

Pain was a close friend of Tamako’s growing up. She knew pain extremely well, but the pain from the barbs and poison was a different level of torture. Tamako also knew that this was her job! She considered her circumstances, and thanked The Seven Decks there were no needle barbs in her back where it would be harder and slower for her to remove them. Taking a mental deep breath, she quickly identified the order of the 5 quills on her arms, legs, and torso... and yanked them out one after the other without pausing. She could tell that if it wasn’t for her AI auto healing as she yanked each barb out, she might have passed out from blood loss.

Tamako was only vaguely aware of Jen and Sam trying to message her, but she croaked out a reply, “I’m coming.” She then stuffed the trauma of the pain far down inside her and looked at Jen and Sam. Jen was closest, so she moved to her, identified the location of all the quills stuck in Jen, and said, “focus on healing and don’t stop healing yourself.” Tamako didn’t wait for a response, and said, “Three, Two, One!” and pulled the barbed quills out one after the other without pausing. Jen fell to the ground screaming in pain and passed out, but Tamako could sense Jen’s AI activating her healing tattoo.

Sam’s eyes widened with apprehension after watching Tamako pull the quills from Jen, but he knew there was no other way. He only hoped she was quick enough. Sam could feel that the poison was also starting to shut down his mana system. He didn’t have a separate mana tattoo designated for powering his AI, and it along with his other mental based skills were shutting down. He couldn’t speak or message Tamako to warn her that he might need healing help.

“Three, Two, One!” Sam heard as Tamako counted down.

“Sam heal yourself!” screamed Tamako as she noticed him collapsing to the ground, and blood pouring out of his wounds. She clamped her hand down hard on his femoral artery near his crotch, to stop the worst of the bleeding. Tamako stopped healing herself, and poured all the remaining healing power of her tattoo into Sam. Tamako vaguely felt the burning and disintegration of her butt healing tattoo as then her AI then used the last of its power to cauterize her own injury before she too passed out.

Slim was pretty far away exploring for a nice cool shady place to take a nap, when he felt Jen’s distress. He made it back in time to see Tamako pass out clutching Sam’s crotch. Slim could sense that Jen’s AI was aware, even though she was still out cold. He could sense that Jen's AI was finishing the healing that Tamako had started on Sam. Slim was impressed with how AI responded to Jen’s unconscious desires. After Jen’s AI cleared the poison from Sam’s mana system, her AI then jump-started Sam’s AI in order for it to activate Sam’s mana system and his own healing tattoo.

Watching Jen's AI work, he was confident they were all going to recover, but Slim knew what he needed to do first. Even more important than looting the StuckUBarb, he needed to go over and sit down on Jen’s chest until she woke up. He also rolled his eyes and snorted mentally, “They’re going to owe me for ruining my afternoon nap plans!” he thought to himself as he kept watch in case anything tried to bother them.

******

Jen was shaking her head trying to dodge the barbed quills that were being shot at her face. She couldn’t comprehend how the quills were turning into little hairs that were getting into her mouth. The worst part was, no matter what she did, she couldn’t get the beast off of her chest, “But how can it be on my chest!?” Jen mentally struggled with understanding how she was being attacked and how to defend herself.

Slim snickered to himself as he stuck his tail in Jen’s face and watched as she would scrunch her nose and face, then turn her head and spit hair out of her mouth before relaxing again…then he did it again.

After about an hour, Jen’s eyes finally struggled open, and Slim hopped off of her chest and said, “It’s about time you woke up.”

Jen rolled off her back and onto her side seeing Sam and Tamako still on the ground, and said, “What? Sam, Tamako?”

Slim replied, “They’ll be fine, but stay calm, I think Tamako might be cheating on you.”

“What are you talking about?” Jen said, and then rolled up on her knees and exclaimed, “My body is killing me. Every muscle aches!”

Jen heard Slim reply something about her running out of mana, while she was reviewing a report her AI gave her on the party’s health and status. She then heard Slim snickering, before he said, “Just stay calm. I bet Tamako thought you were dead from the StuckUBarb, when she decided to make a move on Sam.”

“StuckUBarb, what? Tamako made a pass at Sam?” Jen asked aloud still trying to read her AI’s report, but also trying to get the cobwebs out of her mind. Jen moved over to Sam and Tamako to see if she could do anything, and noticed Tamako’s head on Sam’s stomach and her hand on his crotch. Jen’s eyes widened in confusion as she heard Slim snickering at her, and she said, “You better quit trolling me, and tell me what happened and what’s going on!”

Slim continued to snicker as he replied, “Don’t take your anger out on me Pureheart, I would never betray you like Tamako.”

Jen gave Slim the finger and networked with Tamako’s AI to “see” what happened through Tamako’s memories before she passed out. Jen watched the picture in picture with understanding when she saw Tamako grab Sam’s femoral artery to apply pressure and slow the bleeding.

Jen wanted to immediately heal them both, but her own healing tattoo was also completely out of mana. Jen knew she needed to start channeling all her spare mana into her tattoo so she could start helping everyone’s recovery, but first she took a “screenshot” of Tamako’s hand, where it had apparently moved up from his femoral artery onto Sam’s crotch. Jen was grinning from ear to ear as she imagined how she would troll Sam and Tamako with that picture. What she wasn’t going to think about at that moment was how closely they all came to getting killed.

******

Sam was squatting over inspecting the StuckUBarb in amazement and commented to Slim, “I’m not really mad at the StuckUBarb, kind of jealous of his? her? technique actually… just lays there hidden under the dirt, unnoticeable, waiting for the right prey to cross its path, then it strikes, and your dead. If my AI didn’t activate my lightning tatoo, he’d just sat back and shot more quills at us faster than we could have removed them. We’d all been StuckUBarb dinner!”

Slim raised an eyebrow in agreement, and added, “After eating you three, he could have hibernated at least six months before his next ambush.”

Jen added, “It kind of reminds me of a porcupine.”

Sam chuckled, “Yea, a porcupine that can expand its body like a snake and can eat three adults!”

Tamako could sense the underlying tension in Jen’s and Sam’s banter after almost getting killed, their humor was grating on her nerves and she wanted to get out of there after what happened, “Hurry up and loot the damn thing. We need to get moving and be more on guard. We’ve been relying too heavily on Jen’s birds to give us advance notice of any problems.”

Sam mumbled to himself, “almost failed you Kelly”, then as he looted the StuckUBarb he said, “You’re right Tamako, and we need to get a mana shield spell that can block this type of surprise attack ASAP!”

Jen shrugged at Sam’s comment, but then seeing Sam pause after reading the loot message, she asked, “What loot did we get?”

Sam stood up and said, “A dozen poison quills, a poison sack, but we also received a ‘hibernation core’. It doesn’t give me any more information than that.”

Jen looked at Slim, and he replied, “No idea Pureheart.”

Tamako impatiently said, “Let’s go boss! We can try to figure out what it is when we get to Domino Hill.”

As the group started moving out, Jen said, “Cut the chatter, onboard messaging only, and spread out everyone.”

*******

A few hours earlier, Jen’s birds had already confirmed Bingo City was near, but when it came into sight, Jen pointed and confirmed, “Last chance if anyone wants to look around Bingo City, otherwise It’s my understanding we’re going directly to the System Shop and paying for a teleportation to Domino Hill.”

Sam grumbled, “The sooner we get setup in Domino, the sooner I can get to work on enchantments and tattoos.”

Tamako replied, “Agreed! I feel naked without my healing tattoo, and now that you’ve finished healing my ass, I want Sam to tattoo it as soon as possible!”

Jen didn’t even finish groaning at Tamako’s comment before Sam replied, “Don’t worry Tamako, I’ve been thinking about what I would do with your ass, ever since you squeezed my femoral!”

Tamako nodded seriously, “luckily your femoral was so small, even with my tiny hands I could completely squeeze it off.”

Jen smiled to herself as the joking finally returned, helping lift the oppressive weight that had been following the group ever since they were almost killed by the StuckUBarb. While Sam was flustered trying to think of a comeback for Tamako’s inuendo, Jen hurled a rock at Sam’s leg. Jen then heard a soft ‘crack’ as she observed a static-sized lightning bolt, activated by Sam’s AI, surge out and knocked the rock off course.

Sam seized on the opportunity to change the subject to something besides his femoral, and said, “My AI is indicating that using a deflective electric strike instead of a head-on destructive strike reduced the mana consumption by almost 70%! Of course, I still haven’t figured out a way to compensate for ranged attacks that I don’t or can’t see, smell, or hear coming at me.”

Tamako had been impressed when Sam had his epiphany on how to turn his offensive lightning strikes into defensive strikes, and for the rest of their journey she’d been helping him and his AI “collect data” on the power, speed, angle, range, and just about everything imaginable that would allow his AI to learn the best response to keep him from getting hit while minimizing the mana usage from his lightning tattoo. After hearing Sam comment on his AI’s analysis for the umpteenth time, she thought of a potential problem, and grabbed a handful of dirt and gravel and threw the hundreds of tiny pieces at Sam all at once.

Sam’s AI sent hundreds of static and larger electrical charges to destroy or deflect every piece of gravel and dirt, but Sam fell to one knee breathing hard. Tamako nodded with confirmation of her theory, but asked Sam anyway, “So what happened with your mana?”

Sam was a little pale, but he was already recovering, and replied, “My AI draws from my mana pool, not from mana that I have stored and contained in the muscles of my body with a tattoo. Let me get the actual numbers from my AI…Let’s see, it instantly pulled almost 60% of my mana pool to speed up its’ processing speed enough to analyze and attack every projectile you threw at me.”

Tamako replied, “I’m sure you and Jen can figure a way to link our AI’s to a mana tattoo instead of the mana pool in our core.”

Sam groaned, “Great, just another problem to add to the list.”

Jen was glad the mood was changing, but she was also getting tired of travelling and just wanted to get to Domino Hills, “O.K. let’s get going. You can work on your experiments much more efficiently when we get setup in Domino Hills.”

“Yea, hopefully we get enough gold from Eight-Ball’s bounty to get us settled in a decent place.”

“Less talking, more moving! If we’re lucky we’ll be in Bingo city before noon, and then teleport into Domino Hills shortly thereafter,” Jen replied. She didn’t want to think about the costs of getting setup in Domino Hills. She’d heard prices were astronomical as a result of the Quest that was kicking off there.