Wasteland Warlords: Chapter 9 - Blowback

Clay backpedaled away from the oncoming Incant, raising the M4. He doubted something as mundane as a bullet would put a guy that powerful down, but he wasn’t going to let Lynes take them out without a fight.

The Incant’s massive mech suit stuttered, then tripped. Lynes went down in a crash of metal and swearing.

“Got his legs!” Alex popped up behind the floundering mech suit, the chain of her kusarigama clutched in her fist.

Gears whined and the kusarigama was rudely ripped from her grasp and went sailing across the room. Yanked off balance, Alex tumbled to the floor. Lynes pushed himself up, his huge mech suited frame towering over Alex’s tiny form.

Clay raised the M4, pushing the buttstock firmly into his shoulder pocket, and squeezed off a burst at the furious Aussie. The bullets ricocheted off his suit, barely even scuffing the metal.

Lynes clanked around to face him.

“Shit.” It was exactly as he’d feared. The guy was too powerful. He dropped the M4, letting it dangle on its three-point sling, and pulled out his emergency backup plan. The Wand of Inferno. “Get out of here, Alex!”

“Yeah right!”

“Joe, get her—”

Where the hell was Joe?

The Gearhead Incant broke into a lumbering run that rattled the workshop floor. Clay hopped over a workbench, putting the wooden obstacle between them.

Off to the side, Clay caught sight of Alex jerking open a fridge door. Glass rattled inside. What the hell was she thinking? She was right in Lynes’s periphery!

Thinking fast, Clay grabbed the closest gearhead project—some kind of glass sphere full of cogs and clockwork and glowing magic—and smashed it against a bench vise. That kept the Aussie’s attention focused on him.

A vein in Lynes’s forehead popped up and his face turned red.

“I’ll fuckin’ bleed ya dry!” he bellowed. “How dare you go and break me shit!”

With a flick of his mecha hands, the workbench flipped into the air like it was made of cardboard. Clay tried to duck and roll, but the throw was too fast. The massive bench slammed into him, pinning him to the floor. He kicked and shoved at the heavy bench, but he couldn’t lift it, even with the strength boost from Cinderscale.

“You’re buggered now, ya tumbleweed slag,” Lynes growled darkly as he clanked closer. He hefted a massive warhammer from the debris on the floor.

Clay struggled and fought, but the workbench still wouldn’t budge. The weight of the thing was already starting to cut off circulation to his legs.

Lynes loomed over him and swung the hammer.

Clay thrust the wand out and triggered a fireball at three feet out, muttering a silent prayer that he didn’t blow himself up in the process. The wand kicked in his hand like a .50 Cal Smith & Wesson Revolver, and a fastball of orange and gold tore across the space, slamming into the mecha like a miniature wrecking ball of arcane force. The fireball exploded on impact, knocking the Incant back and splashing liquid flame in every direction. Including onto the workbench still pinning Clay to the floor.

Clay choked and wheezed, finding it hard to breathe through the smoke and debris all around him. Three feet was probably too close for the Wand of the Inferno. If he survived this, he would have to remember that for next time.

“You chook-shite bunga!” Lynes roared, his mecha marching like an angry bull. Burn marks covered the metal slabs and he was missing half of his mustache. “You’re gonna regret that, though not for very long. I’m gonna turn you into a goddamned hat.”

He raised the hammer high overhead, ready to deliver the killing blow—

The ground rumbled and a second mecha slammed into Lynes with the racket of a head-on car crash. Metal crunched and screamed. Clay couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The golem that had been hanging on the chains was wrestling with Lynes, pounding his huge metal fists into the Incant’s chest.

Joe’s head poked up out of the shoulders. “Yeehaw, get you some! Let’s throw anotha shrimp on the baahbie, mate!”

A section of the plates on the golem was glowing red, then orange, then yellow, getting brighter every second the mechanical titans clashed.

“You bloody galah!” Lynes barked, struggling beneath Joe. “That’s not finished yet! The reactor’s still unstable! You’ll kill us all!”

“Be a hell of a ride, though!” Joe hollered cheerfully.

Lynes’s suit bucked, kicking Joe’s off. While the golem suit hit the wall, Gearhead ducked his burned face inside his suit, raised his hands overhead, and with a roar of jets blasted out through the workshop roof.

Joe chuckled. “Chicken shit.”

“I think he was right,” Clay called. “Your suit.”

Joe looked down at the glowing panel, which was just a hair brighter than a thousand suns by then.

“Yoiks.” Joe’s eyebrows jumped up. “We’d better get out of here. First…”

He lumbered over to Clay and picked up the workbench like it weighed nothing, then casually flipped it aside with one metal hand.

“Pretty handy, right?” he said, waggling his eyebrows at his own pun.

Clay got up. “Yeah, now hurry up and get out of it. Where’s Alex?”

“Over here!” She waved at them from the door Lynes had kicked in. She’d managed to recover her kusarigama and had it wrapped around her torso. “Let’s rock. I got the potions, and I don’t want to be here when that thing goes all Chernobyl on us.”

Clay begrudgingly held Chonk—the coon seemed as suspicious of him as he was of it—while Joe clambered out of the mech suit. Then the four of them hightailed it out of the workshop like the Devil was right on their heels. They barely made it a hundred yards down the wide asphalt drive before the whole building blew sky high.

The resultant blast walloped them like a giant’s hand. A tsunami of hot air slammed into Clay’s back and sent him sprawling face-first to the ground, skinning his chin and scuffing his gear, but thankfully not setting him on fire. He’d had enough burns to last him a while. Alex was sprawled out on the asphalt next to him, wiping a bit of blood from a busted lip. He helped her up.

Joe lay a few yards away. Somehow the blast had turned him all the way around, so that he was face up, staring into the flame-tinted sky with Chonk cradled on his stomach.

“Yeah… I’d still buy a mech suit,” he said in a slightly dazed voice. “You guys saw how useful they are. Just a couple bugs to work out. Maybe gonna start asking around in town.”

“Let’s put a pin in that,” Clay said, hauling Joe to his feet. “We better make ourselves scarce before the coons or that crane realize we’re out here.”

They jogged back through the maze to the side gate, this time managing to steer clear of the furry beasts that called this place home.

“How did you get that suit running?” Alex asked after they were safe on the other side of the chain link.

Joe’s face lit up.

“Oh yeah!” He dug into his pocket and pulled out the strange rune he’d looted from the goblins back on their first run. “I was poking around his shop a bit and noticed all his contraptions were powered by runes just like this one. Fyula. Fuel-ah, get it?”

He slapped the rune onto the side of Bertha’s engine case. It stuck like a magnet and let off a brief burst of yellow-white light. Joe grinned like a post-apocalyptic Davy Crocket—chainsaw in hand, mechacoon curled up on top of his head for some reason—then jerked the starter. The chainsaw roared to life. Joe gunned it a few times just for good measure. “Is that awesome or is that extra awesome? Because I’m thinking the latter.”

Alex’s mouth hung open.

All Clay could do was laugh.

Chonk perked up at the noise of the engine. It scampered down onto Joe’s shoulder, nose twitching as it investigated Joe’s whirling blade. It let out a chitter and revved his own little hedge trimmer.

“Hells yeah!” Joe shook Bertha at the sky. “Sawbuddies forever!”

When the excitement finally died down and they were well away from junkyard, they found a spot of open ground where they could rest and inspect their take. Joe was disappointed that all of that mechanical loot had gone up in flames—there was no telling how much had been stored away in that workshop or what it could be used for—but Clay reminded him that they’d managed to come out with the real prize. Alex pulled the potions from her pack one at a time, lining them up carefully in the sand.

“I just grabbed everything I could get my hands on,” she said. “I dropped one and a couple broke in the explosion, but sixteen made it out intact.”

Clay whistled through his teeth. If the Old Weed was telling the truth about how rare these were, they had a literal fortune sitting in front of them. Enough to go back and start life all over again. He could pay off their debts, get the house out of hock, even start up his construction business again. Then there was Alex’s dojo.

He stopped himself from going down that line of thinking. Even if they could do all that, money wouldn’t fix Alex. Not forever. He couldn’t forget the lingering poison debuff listed on her Active Effects. The only way out of that was with the power of an Incant.

And for that they needed the stat potions.

All counted, they had managed to get five strength, five constitution, four dexterity, and two intelligence potions. Each vial offered a permanent +5 boost to its corresponding stat.

“Guess that Gearhead really went hard all the time,” Joe said.

“I don’t think Incants do anything half assed,” Clay said.

After some checking of their current stats with the monocle and talking through the best possible allocation, they divvied the potions up. Alex would need the biggest boost, since she was the one who had to strike the killing blow on Katotes. She got six potions—three strength, two constitution, and one dex. The dex would give her a minor agility and speed boost, the constitution would toughen her up and repair some of the bone density she’d lost during treatments, and with an extra +15 to strength, she’d be able to punch through a brick wall and bend rebar with one hand.

Clay offered Joe one of the intelligence potions, but Joe gave them a hard pass.

“I’ve got all the smarts you two can handle,” Joe said, shooting them a wink. “What I need is more constitution.” He tapped his forehead like he was imparting a piece of wisdom. “More con, less hangover.”

In the end, Clay took both the intel potions, along with two dex, and a strength. He still wasn’t entirely sure what Intelligence did in the grand scheme of things out in the IZ, but he was going to have a lot of it, and with that extra +10 to Dexterity—not counting his Naga Ring—he was going to be fast as hell, not to mention that his marksmanship score would soar right through the roof. He was a little sad he couldn’t go back to the range and requalify. With that much dex, he could probably plant three rounds center mass in the black from a thousand meters without even trying.

Joe took the remaining strength potion, a dex, and a grand total of three constitution potions to help curb his hangovers. He was also going to be hard as hell to kill, but he’d probably bankrupt them at the Yacht Club.

“No way!” Joe swore when Clay mentioned it. “Think of all the drinking contests I’m gonna win now. We’ll be swimming in gold.”

Lynes must’ve been onto something with keeping his potions in the fridge, because they weren’t nearly as nasty as the warm healing potions. They went down like a shot of vodka, burning a little trail of cold fire into Clay’s gut. The tension from the day disappeared, and power took its place. Vitality. Bliss. Strength. He didn’t feel much smarter, but how would he know if he was anyway?

Clay could easily imagine that sudden rush of energy and might becoming an addiction. Probably a good thing those potions were so rare.

Putting on the Monocle of True Seeing, Clay checked Alex and Joe’s stats, then looked down at his own hand.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Clay Jaeger

Level: 0

Race: Human

Class: Unassigned

Alignment: Neutral

Exp: 0 Exp; to next level: 440

Available Characteristic Points: 0

Health: 153/153

H-Regen / 5 Sec: 0

Magick: 210/210

Magick-Regen / 5 Sec: 0

Stats:

· Strength: 19 (17 + 2 item bonus)

· Constitution: 13 (12 + 1 item bonus)

· Dexterity: 25 (23 + 2 item bonus)

· Intelligence: 22

Attributes:

· Armor Rating: 54

· Melee Attack Damage: 63

· Ranged Attack Damage: 85

· Spell Damage: 116.5

· Movement Rate: +7%

· Critical Hit Chance: 10%

· Critical Hit Damage: +62.5%

Active Effects:

· None

Player Special Skills:

· None

╠═╦╬╧╪

Alexandra Jaeger

Level: 0

Race: Human

Class: Unassigned

Alignment: Neutral

Exp: 0 Exp; to next level: 440

Available Characteristic Points: 0

Health: 197/197

H-Regen / 5 Sec: 0

Magick: 150/150

Magick-Regen / 5 Sec: 0

Stats:

· Strength: 26 (24 + 2 item bonus)

· Constitution: 20 (19 + 1 item bonus)

· Dexterity: 18

· Intelligence: 13

Characteristics:

· Armor Rating: 77

· Melee Attack Damage: 103

· Ranged Attack Damage: 67

· Spell Damage: 85

· Movement Rate: +4.6%

· Critical Hit Chance: 6.8%

· Critical Hit Damage: +59%

Active Effects:

· Poison, Effect Ongoing

Player Special Skills:

· None

╠═╦╬╧╪

Of the three of them, Clay was definitely at a disadvantage. Alex was significantly stronger than him now, and Joe’s HP had jumped dramatically up to 225, seventy-two points higher than Clay. Still, Clay wasn’t too upset at the changes. His melee attack damage had increased by a mile—from 39 all the way up to 63—and his Health and Armor rating had increased as well. His Ranged Attack Damage had skyrocketed, leaping to a hefty 75—far higher than either Joe or Alex—and his Movement Rate, Critical Hit Chance, and Crit Damage had all increased significantly as well.

The biggest gain, however, was to his Magick score and his Spell Damage. Not that he could do any magic—outside the Wand of Fireball—but once he figured out how to cast spells, he was going to open a can of magical whoop ass on anything that got in the way.

Overall, the three of them were looking pretty beastly. He passed the monocle around to the other two have a look for themselves.

“Damn, son!” Joe whooped when he saw his new stats.

╠═╦╬╧╪

“Lumberjack” Joe Jaeger

Level: 0

Race:Human

Class:Unassigned

Alignment:Neutral

Exp: 0 Exp; to next level: 440

Available Characteristic Points: 0

Health: 225/225

H-Regen / 5 Sec: 0

Magick: 80/80

Magick-Regen / 5 Sec: 0

Stats:

· Strength: 20 (17 + 3 item bonus)

· Constitution: 31 (30 + 1 item bonus)

· Dexterity: 16

· Intelligence: 9

Attributes:

· Armor Rating: 102

· Melee Attack Damage: 85

· Ranged Attack Damage: 67

· Spell Damage: 51

· Movement Rate: +4.2%

· Critical Hit Chance: 6.6% (3.6% + 3% item bonus)

· Critical Hit Damage: +58%

Active Effects:

· None

Player Special Skills:

· Bounded Companion - Lv. 0

╠═╦╬╧╪

“We could actually take down a Dungeon Lord like this,” Alex said in an awed voice. “I thought we were ready before, but…” She shook her head. “No way. Like this, though, maybe we can pull it off.”

Clay nodded. “We’ll rest up and get everything ready, then head out tomorrow.”