Museum Core Chapter 25: Expedition

Getting up in the morning was rarely fun.

Getting a six-year-old to get up was a nightmare … under normal circumstances. And the current circumstances were a mess.

… Which was why Jaclyn decided to shelve standard parenting and let Eve have a full English breakfast on a weekday. A few days of less-than-healthy eating was preferable to a mental breakdown.

She also had her daughter get dressed in the spare set of clothing she kept at the precinct. Someone could take the kids to get a few extra sets during the day, things Jaclyn herself wouldn’t have the time for.

In fact, there was a high likelihood that she’d be going out in her uniform for formal occasions or even the old uniform she’d worn while on foot patrol, years ago, and never bothered to clean out of her locker.

It would take months for people to establish a regular routine again even if things had somehow gone back to normal while she’d slept.

Having a working routine was something that could be incredibly beneficial, and rather messy if disrupted.

Just last week, she’d almost died, admittedly of embarrassment, because something had tripped her up in action she did without even thinking.

There was this coffee shop which had opened near her home last year and she’d basically been the first customer. She’d liked the coffee, so she’d returned, over and over again, until she’d become a regular, the baristas recognized her on sight, and she talked with several while they made her drink.

Normally, she ordered, placed the cash on the counter immediately afterwards, and then she and the barista chatted.

But last week, some rude customer had complained right at the moment when she normally paid, and she hadn’t already put the money on the table by the time she got her coffee. But normally, she’d have already paid by this point, and in her mind, her tab was settled.

She’d only realized that she’d forgotten to pay once she was five minutes out of the door, so she returned. And that’s when it turned out that the barista hadn’t noticed either.

Almost a year of near-identical interactions, and all it had taken to nearly kill two people, her of embarrassment, the barista of laughter, was one little disruption.

Jaclyn sighed.

She dropped Eve off at the impromptu daycare that had been established in the lobby of the Holiday Inn, and headed off to work, once again dressed in the same clothing she’d worn yesterday, with only a small amount of effort having gone into cleaning her blood out. It wasn’t that bad anymore, but it wasn’t exactly great either.

When the precinct came into view, Jaclyn winced.

Things were … messy.

Central London had been struck by a magical catastrophe, with innocents being caught up in it. First, they’d started calling 999, and then, when the lines had started getting clogged, they’d started using alternate means of contact, but overall, people had stayed home.

Yesterday, when it wasn’t clear how things would proceed, or if there was a second shoe about to drop.

But today, people were getting over their shock, starting to take action, but the phone lines were still jammed. And now, so was the entrance to the precinct.

The building had a side door, it had to for fire safety if nothing else, but judging from the look of that crowd, any new entrance would also be swiftly swarmed, just like yesterday. But this time, there wouldn’t be enough space between her and the crowd for her to close it behind her.

Jaclyn didn’t relish the thought of trying to fight her way through a crowd, but she supposed that was her only choice, wasn’t it?

Then, the precinct’s windows caught her eye. The first-floor windows.

Was it a bad idea? Probably.

But “probably” was quite a bit less bad than the “definitely” it would have been even two days prior.

She’d have been able to get up to the first floor even before, she wasn’t half-bad at parkour, and she’d literally doubled her physical strength yesterday.

And if she fell, well, she knew how to do so safely, it had been a part of everything from police training to several of the martial arts she’d tried out/learned.

What was the worst that could happen?

Well, she could crack her skull open if she fell supremely badly, but that was rather unlikely.

In the end, she decided to go for it.

Jaclyn took a running start, straight at the wall, jumped, ran up the wall for a few more steps until she was able to grab onto the windowsill and pulled herself up with surprising ease.

It made sense now that she thought about it, her physical strength had increased but her weight hadn’t budged, so it was perfectly logical that she’d be able to move herself more easily, but it had still been unexpected.

Getting inside from there was pretty simple.

Knock on the window, nearly give the nearest colleague a heart attack, and then have herself be let in.

“Are you ok? I think you have blood on your collar …”

“Yeah, yesterday was crazy,” she responded.

Jacyln glanced down at herself and sighed. Did she really want to join the expedition looking like she’d just murdered someone?

It wasn’t like she actually had done anything like that, but it still wasn’t a good look.

In the end, wound up dipping into the locker room to grab one of her spare sets of clothing. She’d have to wear yesterday’s mess eventually, but it might be a good idea to make a solid first impression when the military finally showed up.

… Even if their response time yesterday had been abysmal. A plane had been knocked out of the sky by some kind of invisible effect and that had basically ended all further exploration of the city on that end.

It might be perfectly understandable that losing most of the military superiors and the government that stood above them had caused a ton of chaos, but it had taken them until it was dark out to properly section off the city.

The police had been far faster, and they had been running things out of a comparatively tiny precinct, headed by a single Chief Superintendent, and they certainly didn’t have protocols for this shit in place.

By comparison, if the military was not prepared for someone launching a decapitation strike at the nation by bombing the capital, which this had effectively been, they’d fundamentally failed. They were the ones supposed to be dealing with the big stuff, damnit.

In the end, Jaclyn did have to admit that if it hadn’t been for Owens having had both the rank and presence of mind to direct operations, the police would have been about as useful as tits on a bull. But it wasn’t their job to deal with something on this scale.

That was the military, who didn’t have much to do other than train in peacetime, well, that, and try to use the soldier card to pick up girls when off duty. Fairly safe.

But in exchange, in a time of war, they had a far more dangerous job and they were supposed to do it, damnit.

She dropped by the superintendent’s room, briefly.

“Morning, Jaclyn,” Owens muttered as she entered through the open door, already fully immersed in the current situation.

“Morning,” She responded. “The convoy should be ready soon, is there anything else I need to know about?”

“A Major Lowe is in charge, he’s been apprised of the situation and been chosen specifically because he’s the most likely of everyone available to actually listen to you and Gula.”

“A soldier listening to a cop, that’ll be the day,” Jaclyn sighed.

“I mean, if there’s one advantage to things having taken this long, it’s that the military had enough time to decide who does what,” Owens shrugged. “I’ve been dealing directly with generals and admirals, they’re taking this seriously. I think they should be able to find someone who won’t muck things up.”

He then proceeded to root around in one of the paperwork piles on his desk before sliding a piece of paper across to her. It was covered in his chicken scratch handwriting, though Jaclyn could read it perfectly well due to long years of practice.

“Directions to the staging point, please don’t take Gula there until the convoy is ready, people are already testy enough without seeing magical creatures walk around.”

“Yeah,” Jaclyn sighed. “It’s too easy to point fingers.”

She got to her feet. “Let’s hope things go well.”

“Good luck,” Owens told her as she left.

Jaclyn left the precinct the same way she’d gone in, straight out of the window. She was done elbowing her way through crowds if she could avoid it. Not to mention that with her growing strength level, that could easily become dangerous for others.

She found the address easily enough, it was nearby but far enough from the precinct that over a dozen military vehicles didn’t obstruct any of the goings on.

“Inspector Jaclyn Abrahams, Metropolitan Police Service, looking for Major Lowe,” she introduced herself after walking up to the nearest soldier who didn’t look busy.

“Could I see your warrant card, Inspector?”

Jaclyn had already been in the process of producing her official means of proving her identity and presented it.

“Thank you, inspector, he’s right over there,” the soldier sent her on her way, pointing at a black-haired man who looked to be around her age.

He looked up from a clipboard as she approached and greeted her.

“Inspector Abrahms, I presume?”

She nodded.

“I’m Major Major Lowe,” he introduced himself in turn, before adding. “That is actually my name, I’m afraid my parents had a different career in mind when they named me.”

He put the clipboard away and turned to fully face her.

“I’m told we can’t rely on electronic devices in the jungle, so I’ve made sure that every single soldier knows how to communicate without their radios, and even got some air horns out of storage, and some flares, in case everything else fails.”

“Air horns?” Jaclyn asked.

“They’re purely mechanical, and loud enough that we’ll hear them even if things get seriously chaotic,” Lowe pointed out. “How long did it take for your radio to stop working?”

“Around two hours, I think, but I only used it intermittently,” Jaclyn admitted.

“And the main aggressive creatures you encountered were what you referred to as ’Creepers’ in your report? Not too strong, but almost impossible to detect and with incredible reach?” Lowe pressed.

“‘Almost impossible to detect’ doesn’t do them justice,” Jaclyn shook her head. “They’re almost invisible in the foliage and the only sounds I’ve ever heard one make is them hitting the ground after dying, and one of their eyeballs bursting under my knuckles.”

“So they do make sounds?” Lowe frowned.

“No, the eyeball itself made the sound,” Jaclyn clarified. “It’s like watching a movie with the sound turned off, I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Shoot,” Lowe muttered. “I was given full authorization to pull from the base stores and have every detecting device under the sun, but once those fail, we’ll be back to trying to spot those things with our eyes alone.”

Jaclyn nodded. “I do have slightly enhanced eyesight, I’d like to be in the front car, if possible.”

“That can be arranged.”

“And it might be for the best if Miss Worldstrider were in the rearmost car, her senses and firepower should be enough to keep our backs clear.”

This time, Lowe took a few seconds to respond, before agreeing to that as well.

“Thank you, inspector. Now, I do have some more things to arrange, would you mind waiting a few minutes before we’re ready to head out?”

Of course, she wasn’t too happy about that, but she didn’t kick up a fuss, instead choosing to stand off to the side, out of the way, and look over her status screen.

Name: Jaclyn Abrahms

Race: Human

Class: Anima Monk

F-Rank, Level 4/20

Class Abilities

Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)

Statistics (0 points available)

Body: 20

Magic: 0

Mind: 14

Spirit: 15

Skills

Pugilism 14

Bàoquán 15

Firearms Handling 8

Situational Awareness 13 -> 14

Bullshit Radar 11 -> 12

Martial Arts 15

…

It had changed even overnight, with an additional Level being gained in both Situational Awareness and Bullshit Radar, in other words, her ability to be aware of her surroundings and see through the nonsense other people put in front of her.

Of course, those numbers didn’t directly translate to a certain degree of proficiency, or at least she didn’t know the exact “conversion ratio”, but it was still shocking to see such growth. It had taken her most of her life to get to this point, and to see such massive new growth just went to show what kind of a difference this “System” made. Honestly, it was more than a little freaky, to grow better at something by being “awarded” proficiency, rather than acquiring it through blood, sweat, and tears.

But it was enough to make her think.

Granger’s speech last night had resonated with her. Under these video game-like paths to power, everyone had the exact same amount of power, it was just a question of choosing where that power went.

She’d actually watched a few videos last night, looking into various build instructions and how dominating they could be.

There was no video game that directly reflected her advancement method, but the basic principle was, well, basic.

She could train as much as she had time to, to whatever heights her time allowed her to, but only six skills at once. Which she chose to train was what would make the greatest difference.

Synergy was the name of the game, though she’d have to keep in mind that this was real life and that she would need certain utility skills.

Bullshit Radar, specifically, was a shoo-in for that reason. She headed out into a dangerous jungle purely on the orders of superiors, relying on reports made by others, and she’d likely be heavily mired in politics before this thing was done. Being able to sense bullshit was a vital skill.

Bàoquán was the martial art she was best at, so she was obviously going to keep it, while Pugilism directly strengthened her blows and, according to Gula, would start actively protecting the body parts she attacked with while attacking. Those two belonged together like chips and beer-battered fish.

Martial Arts did not give her a direct, numerical, boost and large parts of it were about appearance, but that particular Skill smoothed out every part of her fighting and allowed actions to flow into each other for an overall faster transition between attacks, as well as switching between attack and defense.

Overall, it didn’t do anything to empower a single given attack, but was a nice overall boost to her abilities.

Which was also where Situational Awareness came in. One-on-one, it did precisely nothing, but that wasn’t what she needed it for. Real-world fights were nothing like battles in the ring, where you only needed to be concerned with the opponent in front of you, as she’d learned through painful experience.

No, even when you were already dueling a given opponent, someone else could come up and catch you flat-footed. Between that and the overall risk of surprise attacks and sucker punches, anyone who dispensed with that particular ability was a moron.

Which just left Firearms Handling.

It was nice, but limited. It wouldn’t take long for her training to become useless. Her body grew stronger as she leveled, but her gun didn’t. She could swap it out for something bigger, all the way to something that would break the wrist of a normal human unless they held it ju-u-just right. But that would be the end of it.

And even if someone built magical guns later down the road, her entire Class was built around hand-to-hand combat.

Her years of experience on the job and even her common sense told her that fist-fighting people with guns was a terrible idea, and yet … magic. Eventually, she’d become magical enough to tell common sense to stuff it.

But what to replace that skill with?

Kickboxing would be the obvious choice. But was it, though? That was a different method of attack, it wouldn’t directly boost her primary attack method.

So what would directly stack on her ability to throw down? Preferably while also empowering her in other ways?

The answer was so simple it was obvious.

Athletics. It was the foundation of basically every kind of non-simple physical activity, and while she mostly grew stronger via the System now, being in good shape was still useful, apparently.

And the Skill was already at Level 13, reflecting the fact that she was a pretty active person. So, firearms were out, raw physicality was in.

***

It took an annoying amount of time, but eventually, the convoy got moving and dropped by the precinct for Gula to hop on.

The orcish camp had been largely blocked off by construction fencing with placards for some visual privacy, and thankfully, it hadn’t quite become public knowledge that they were there. So the shaman could just walk over to them with her hood up and hands in pockets. She might have been a little tall for a human, but not so huge that it would draw attention from people already laser-focused on the precinct.

“Uh … which way?” Sergeant Smith asked Jaclyn from beside her, in the driver’s seat.

“Take a left here,” she told him. “Do you seriously not know which way to go?”

“The GPS got removed in preparation and this is my first time in London.”

Jaclyn sighed. They could have still made sure at least the driver of the lead car knew where to go.

Still, she did know the way, so she began to give instructions.

Ten military vehicles designed for rough terrain, half of them only having two inhabitants to leave space for the people they were here to rescue, half stuffed to the gills with heavily armed people, a machine gun on the roof, and hauling along small drones, thermal goggles, and there were even two cars equipped with radar meant to detect moving personnel.

That last one especially was of somewhat questionable utility in a jungle, given the density of … stuff inside, but it had nevertheless been brought along.

The urban jungle flowed past in a matter of minutes, soon replaced by an actual wall of foliage on either side.

The radio once crackled to life, Major Lowe reminding everyone to be careful and stay clear of the plants since they were liable to hide nasty stuff.

Jaclyn found plenty of snakes as they drove onwards, pointing out a few that were in dangerous places.

Some kind of titanic boa constrictor-thing hung above the road, blending in with the vine it was hanging from, but it was torn apart by a burst of fire from the roof-mounted machine guns.

Another pack of Creepers hid in one tree, visible only due to the fact that there were too many to easily hide, and they too were blown to pieces.

“This is Abrahms, the jungle’s coming alive,” Jaclyn announced over the radio. “I think all the noise might be letting creatures figure out there isn’t a big grumpy monster around, ready to tear apart the first thing to show itself.”

Or rather, she tried to. Her radio had turned into a brick.

“Can I borrow your radio?” she asked Smith. His still worked, so she repeated herself, but she heard several responses along the line of “one of the radios in this car stopped working”.

So, half an hour in the first technological devices started to fail. They had spares that hadn’t even been turned on yet, but they didn’t know if being deactivated was enough to save them from whatever was messing with their tech.

This needed to be brought to an end as soon as possible.

***

Jaclyn had spent most of the time in the jungle directing the convoy towards Hyde Park, but before they reached it, she caught sight of the smoke signals once again, and redirected the convoy to find … the Natural History Museum. An entirely new Natural History Museum, complete with dragon-things on the roof and massive puddles of blood on the stairs leading up to it.

Ok, what in the blue blazes happened here?