Chapter 112: Ba-glue-ka

Trash Compactor MK II Prototype

Forgive the label, but I think we both know this isn’t where you are stopping with this.

Made of a sock weaved out of wire, the heaviest metals you could salvage from human trash, and a bunch of Plug Mud you’ve juiced to insane levels with your adhesives skill, this weapon is better and worse than the original all at the same time. It’s more balanced and slightly more rigid, which makes it more controllable. It’s more durable and it’s benefiting from a much better weapon crafting skill buff.

But it’s not done and you know that. Those trash pellets you used for the original were heavy as hell. Normal lead isn’t, no matter how many car batteries you had to rob of terminals to get it. You can do better, and probably will.

So while this is a pretty good weapon, it doesn’t get stat buffs. It’s just something for you to use while you figure out something better, something that fills a gap in your arsenal temporarily until you can get something working that will fill it permanently.

Sean pulled the weapon, stepping forward and off side with his dominant leg to throw himself into a spin while he hit with all the force his torso could generate. He wasn’t going for a subtle, well-aimed strike. The ninja blocked, of course, but it didn’t matter. This was an attack that relied on mass to work, not skill.

The impact was everything Sean had hoped. It didn’t lift the ninja literally off the ground, unfortunately, but it did break the ninja’s stance and throw his weapon-arm fully to the side, allowing Sean to follow up by shouldering into the guy’s chest. Sean’s superior all-around stats won out, pushing the guy out of the way as he kept on sprinting.

The delay wasn’t without its costs. Sean felt a burning in his back as he started to be peppered by light projectiles he assumed the ninjas were throwing. It wasn’t a lot of damage, as most of the projectiles weren’t hitting. But enough that the damage was adding up, and that was before he realized they were poisoned.

Status Effect Incurred: Slowing Poison

The following information has been provided as a result of your advanced combat and healing skills. It is not necessarily complete.

You have been poisoned by a substance meant to slow your reaction time and movement speeds. While this poison might also produce damage, its primary aim is to incapacitate you rather than producing more lethal effects.

Well, damn, Sean thought. It was nice that his status screen was more powerful, but these guys were keeping up just fine even without the poison. Now he was on a timer. He could either turn around and fight, which had been his plan before he became aware that he was poisoned, or he could run away. But home was far enough that he wasn’t sure he’d make it in time, so that wasn’t the best option either.

Oh well. When in doubt, do what Jeff would do.

Sean reached into his bag, grabbed a Short Stack, and prayed it wouldn’t blow off his hand as he primed it, waited a split second, then chucked it at the ground between him and the ninjas. It worked much better than he had hoped. Not only did his hand remain attached to his wrist as he preferred, but the bomb went off spectacularly. The initial sparks caught the Plug Mud on fire, making an instant cloud of smoke well beyond Sean’s expectations. When the batteries fully exploded a moment later, that smoke was pushed outward in the company of ultra-hot flames, filling the alley behind him.

It might not have been that actually dangerous for stat-enhanced people, but it looked like it was, and that was the main thing. Sean took off at a sprint, and after a minute or so of moving towards his house, found that the pursuers were gone. They stayed gone, somehow, even as the poison continued slowing him down. By the time he got to his house, he was staggering, but he made it back into the hallway without a fuss, where he collapsed.

—

Waking up a few hours later, Sean thought about goals. “Lots of chase-oriented builds pinging you in the back with toxins” was a problem for him, he had just learned. Knowing he could escape was nice, but he had a limited amount of those bombs. He needed something better.

Luckily, he had pipes. Lots of them. When stuff came out of the recycling bin, it tended to ignore the laws of physics in terms of maximum size and length. As he and Brett had accumulated pipes, they had just stored them in the back.

So he glued three of them side to side, belted them together, and capped them on one side. Screwing in a handle to all that Plug Mud wasn’t hard, either. Finding springs was harder, with Sean eventually opting to make some with thermite, strips of steel salvaged from various things, and a lot of injury-inducing trial and error.

In between the invention sessions, he spent his time imbuing Plug Mud with the sheer pink power of time, accumulating a big barrel of it. Whether or not he’d need it to escape, having a bunch of weird glue on hand didn’t seem all that bizarre to him, anymore.

And this time, he honestly had to stay in place. He slept. He stretched and exercised, to the extent that even had meaning for him anymore. He just about memorized the base upgrade menu, and eventually, it was time to call Itto.

—

Sean was once again thankful for his EZ Carry pouch. He had a stupid amount of stuff in there. To the extent he was able, he had made various apple slurries that could be drunk on the road, some reasonably good stamina-buff potions made with different forms of soda and apples, and one entirely wrong thing he wasn’t sure he should have made at all.

Suicide Slurry

You’ve mixed every kind of soda on the entire dispenser. No, it doesn’t taste better that way. You just never progressed past being eight.

You then put solid food into it like it was normal because you’ve never mentally progressed past six.

When this potion is imbibed, you will gain a random 1-30% increase in DEX and VIT which lasts five minutes. It will then wear off and leave you with a flat 30% debuff to the same stats because you don’t live the kind of lifestyle that makes it likely you will physically progress past whatever age you are now.

Sean very much hoped he didn’t have to drink the potion anytime soon. In video games, the debuff would be kinda dangerous in a fictional sense. Here, it would be that for real, plus he’d have to actually feel the pain.

Now he stood at what amounted to a payphone near his house, trying his hardest to look inconspicuous as he called the police station to meet up with Itto.

“You? Where the hell have you been?” the large woman boomed. “Itto said you were being hunted. He’s been ready to go for days.”

“He said he needed this long to get ready.”

“Under normal circumstances, sure. You didn’t think that having a group of assassins on your trail would be noticed after that fun you had with the bomb? Or that he wouldn’t hurry after that?”

“Oh, huh.” Sean actually hadn’t thought of either thing. “So he’s ready to go now?”

There was a frustrated silence on the other end of the line for a bit before the woman spoke again.

“Yes. Do you know where the spaceport is?”

“I do.”

“Get down there. Look for a little purple ship. That’s Itto’s. I’ll call ahead and make sure he’s ready to go.”

“Okay, got it. On my way.”

“And, Sean?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t cause any more trouble in my city, or I’ll forget about this deal with Itto and kill you myself.”

Sean nodded as the line cut. He started moving towards the spaceport on foot. He wasn’t sure he was far enough to justify a bus ride, and at the moment, there was little he wanted less than to be suspended visibly above the city, high enough that he couldn’t get down quickly but low enough to hit with darts.

He moved as inconspicuously as he could, sticking close to buildings and generally trying his hardest to keep his head down. Any hopes he had of that working out were dashed when the ninja group appeared again, this time not making any bones about going loud in public. Sean ducked and sprinted as the first cloud of darts came his way, jumping over a one-story building as he cut off their line of sight.

Wait, where did they go? Sean was now running down a side street, one that provided rear access to a row of businesses. He looked behind him after several seconds to find the ninjas were just gone. They hadn’t followed him around the corner.

Did the cops get them? Probably not. They don’t strike me as all that competent in the first place.

Another half minute passed, and Sean was in spitting distance of the spaceport. The side street ended up being a pretty straight shot, one that became more and more mandatory to stay with as the buildings on either side of him transitioned from mostly single-story shops to multi-floor industrial warehouses.

Just as he thought he might make it without any more trouble, the ninjas made themselves known. A group of shadows suddenly got smaller as the ninjas jumped down from either sides of the building, landing square in between Sean and the port.

“Oh, hey,” Sean said. “I thought you might show up again.”

He hadn’t really ever expected for this part of his trip to be easy because, well, nothing ever really was. As the ninjas reached for more of the little pins they had been throwing at him, he put his hand down to his pack and brought out his newest, meanest, most stupid creation yet.

Ba-glue-ka

This is less a weapon and more a… deployment system? It’s a bunch of tubes with industrial-strength springs in them. You pull out the pins holding those springs down, and they push little plugs of hardened glue you made against still-soft glue, throwing it out into the air.

For anyone else, this would be stupid. It’s still arguably stupid for you, but less so. Glue is sort of your thing, and you’ve only ever made partial use of it. This is the big experiment which should show you whether it’s worth it outside of crafting or not.\

Effects: Glue loaded in the Ba-Glue-Ka stays fresh indefinitely so long as the weapon is stored. Once it’s drawn, you have a limited amount of time to fire before you get problems.