Book 2 - Chapter 11: Cthulian Body Language

It was a weird time. Sean came from the generation of people who had proved too soft to deal with the Apocalypse, and I always got the feeling that he was above-average soft even for them. It wasn’t the kind of thing that you could just tell him to stop doing. He had grown up different than anyone else, and the few weeks of danger he had been through weren’t nearly enough to fix that.

Sometimes, that meant extraordinary things would happen. Not just anybody managed to make fast friends with a dragon, for instance, and I’m pretty sure he did that on accident by being a naturally gentle kind of person. But for all the good it did, most of the time things didn’t go that way.

It was like he was on a schedule. For a while, we’d have some peace. We’d make some weapons. Have some laughs. And then two days later we’d both be dangled over some kind of fire, doing ridiculous things to survive.

Was he good to be around? Sure. But he also dragged in trouble, like some kind of red-headed net designed to catch problems instead of fish.

The Big Book of Brett, Page 12

—

Really, Sean thought, I don’t need to help here. Everything he knew about the future told him that. People didn’t generally stick their necks out to help other people, and when they did, they sometimes got daggers in them for their trouble.

In a practical sense, he didn’t know who this tentacle person was. He did know they were a person, simply because they were close enough to generate a system-message if they had been a monster, and he wasn’t getting one. They were almost certainly an offworlder, though, and his experience with offworlders was far from even being mixed. Every single non-earthling in his immediate sample, with the exception of Cedarhelm, was a gigantic chode.

That said, he didn’t actually know this guy. It was entirely possible Ol’ Tentacles was a hard-scrabble orphan who had won an admission token from a rare drop and was just looking to improve his life. Sure, it wasn’t likely. But it was possible he wasn’t absolutely some kind of terrible space Hitler who deserved to die just because Sean wasn’t feeling particularly helpful that day.

His three darts sped through the air, hitting the boxer’s back. It didn’t have much for armor, besides muscles, which Sean wasn’t sure would count even if they were hard to pierce. It didn’t end up mattering. The boxer did not like getting hit with them at all. It howled balboaishly, spun on a dime, and immediately started moving towards Sean.

As much as he did not want to be in this fight, there was something refreshing about scrapping with a similarly leveled melee specialist again. It wasn’t an easy opponent. The boxer had excellent footwork, something that Sean had never actually encountered before, and that turned out to mean that it was always, always positioned correctly to hit him.

The only way Sean could stay ahead of his new opponent was by dual wielding both the Mystereamer and the Spectral Sticker and focusing attacks on its arms from the maximum range he could maintain. He had about five successful stabs in on the thing’s forearm before it caught him with a stiff jab on the chin, throwing his vision into disarray for a few seconds.

Shit. I guess I don’t like getting punched in the face.

He stabbed both weapons out repeatedly in front of him as he backed up as fast as he could, trying to avoid more hits. The blunt damage from the strike had either pierced through his leather head guard as if it wasn’t there, or would be that much worse if it caught him on some uncovered spot. He wasn’t eager to eat any more of them, in any case.

As soon as Sean’s head snapped back down and his eyesight came back to normal, he pressed the attack again, punching into the boxer’s arms again and again with his weapons. If he was honest with himself, he was fighting the thing wrong. He could have probably wrapped it up with the Sticky Hand, and he imagined that getting tangled would be about the worst possible thing that could happen to an unarmed-melee class. But even in the heat of combat, he had a dim awareness that maybe he didn’t want to show absolutely every one of his cards to an octopus he had just met.

Eventually, the boxer’s arms started to lower a bit, either because its second wind ability was wearing off, or because Mystereamer’s accumulated weird-damage-type procs had worn it down. Either way, Sean was suddenly able to hit it more and more deeply while not increasing the danger he was in. Its boxing got worse and worse, until finally, it stumbled enough during a lunging punch aimed at Sean’s face that he was able to bring the Mystereamer down through its skull.

Stabbing the thing through the brain, if it had one, proved to be enough. The boxer went limp immediately, then collapsed. Sean decided against looking through its loot right away, given that there was still a combatant on the field, one who hadn’t helped at all during the fight. Wheeling around, he found the squid sitting up on the ground, watching him.

At least its little tentacle things are still. If it starts waving those at me I might have to attack it.

“You okay?” Sean asked, cautiously approaching the squid at what he hoped was a non-threatening pace. “I notice you didn’t help much back there.”

The squid cocked its head to the side. Sean was not at all confident he knew enough about Cthulian body language to interpret what that meant. After a few long seconds, a noise boomed out, not in the air but in Sean’s own head.

Apologies. Protecting from the boxer’s last hit drained much stamina. Unable to attack for the time being. Thankfulness.

Shit, telepathy? Sean thought, despite himself. You can hear this?

The squid didn’t move or project any other words into Sean’s brain in response.

“You can hear my thoughts? Some kind of telepath?” Sean said, out loud this time.

Negative response. Many points in MAG sometimes prevent this. Reassurance. Your mental defenses are strong.

Sean wouldn’t have trusted that at all if it wasn’t for a notification popping up around the same time saying essentially the same thing.

Cagey Brain (Achievement)

In your first encounter with a telepathic entity of similar level, you have rebuffed attempts to gain access to any and all levels of your conscious mind. They knocked, and your stats barred the door. That’s pretty good for a guy without a lick of mind powers or any built up resistances to mental probing.

While some entities may have additional methods to pierce your defenses, you have proved that you have at least some baseline resistance to that method of attack.

Rewards: +1 MAG, Mental Resistance Skill

He’d take a look at the skill later. Even though it was good to know that he wasn’t currently having his mind scraped, he still had to consider that this particular bad boy was fully capable of hurting him in other ways if it so chose.

Proposal. Consciously lowering mental defenses allows for communication.

Reassurance. This entity does not expect you to do so.

The little subject header words in the thing's communication, Sean decided, weren’t just that. Each of them had a certain flavor. Proposal felt like a slight tinge of desire to accomplish a goal, while reassurance mimicked the relief in successfully clarifying a misunderstanding.

It was incredibly weird.

“No, I don’t think I will, for now. I hope you understand. We’ve just met. And this seems to be working so far.” Sean holstered the spear, and let the Mystereamer drop down to his side instead of pointing it at the thing. He didn’t want to spook this guy and end up in combat unnecessarily if he could help it. “You didn’t do that badly with that boxer. You almost had him, until the end.”

Frustration. The enemy resists large amounts of damage before termination.

Thankfulness. This entity was in danger.

Query. Your weapon damage type pierces defenses.

The “query” entry was weird, in that the mental tone of voice Sean was hearing didn’t change its intonation for questions.

“Something like that. It’s hard to explain.” Sean decided to be as vague as possible about his skill-set, for now. “I can see how high defense would be a problem for you. That single hit seemed to take you down pretty fast.”

Confirmation. This entity’s physical defenses are low.

Frustration. The Boxer Man enemy is well-suited to defeat this entity.

Query. You possess a place to rest and recover safely.

There was no way in hell Sean was telling it about his base.

“No, I don’t. I’ve just been sleeping in the trees, so far.”

Frustration. Dissatisfaction. The trees are needlessly uncomfortable.

Sean started as one of the squids arm-tentacles began waving. From close up, he could see a sudden shimmering in the air shoot away from the tentacle. He was relieved to see that whatever energy the squid was shooting wasn’t aimed at him, but instead at one of the trees it had mentioned, bashing into the trunk and leaving a small scratch in the bark.

Emphasis. This entity does not enjoy the trees.

—

The next fifteen minutes were tense, but at least productive. Sean didn’t tell it much, despite the squid-man’s apparent natural curiosity about Sean’s capabilities. But he didn’t stonewall it entirely, either. He confirmed he was a melee specialist, and that he was at least confident holding the Boxer at bay for a short time, if not defeating the system monsters entirely.

The squid turned out to have not faced any of the Tells yet, so Sean filled him in on the ranged threat. The squid seemed unconcerned with that, and explained that for “this entity”, as it referred to itself, most ranged attacks could be mitigated to some extent.

As much risk as working with an offworlder seemed to be, Sean had to balance it against the fact that he was pretty sure a mixed group of Tells and Boxers would be big, big trouble for him. And from what he had seen of the Squid’s capabilities so far, he didn’t think it would be too much of a stretch to assume that he could at least make a good showing of things if it came down to a fight.

He was still holding back as much information as he could. The squid had asked about his whip, and he had told it that it was for some specific utility situations, like climbing. It had asked about his combat system and skills, and he had explained only the weapons it had seen so far. And he was avoiding even thinking about the Shanktuary, to the extent he could. There was just no way he was going to put Brett at risk, or give the squid a good reason to want to kill him.

The octopus was probably holding back information as well. Sean couldn’t blame it. From what it said, it could put out consistent ranged damage at medium ranges, especially if it could concentrate, and could bat down most kinds of missiles so long as they didn’t move too incredibly fast or have specific counter-measures that kept it from doing that.

Since Sean couldn’t go home, and the squid didn’t have a home to go to, that was that. Fully recovered now, they set out to hunt.