CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Thirty-One

When someone died in the Juxtaposition, whatever was in their Storage Slot appeared, but it seemed that Scrubz had been traveling lightly. A pillow fell to the floor off the low pile, followed by a blanket. A plate of Nacho’s pancakes clattered off the shattered tile, along with a bottle of Epic Tier one maple syrup. That was it.

It was a terribly sad sight for Nacho.

A flaming arrow—part fantasy fire arrow and part concussion grenade—arched through the convention center and exploded in the middle of Nacho’s guild members, sending them staggering away. Richard Crave was in the house, and he had brought friends.

The Final Victory’s Greatmace Warrior came charging into the melee and slammed his giant weapon into Brie, who went rolling across the floor even though she blocked the massive attack. Reuben ran forward with a challenging shout, clearly planning to punch the flavor off the bruiser’s tongue, but Rizzo slid out of the shadows and slashed the Healer's legs as he passed.

Reuben went down hard as the other dregs of Crave’s organization, wounded, torn up, and mightily displeased, closed in with bows, crossbows, and spells ready for flinging.

One small bonus was that Red Suzy Blacke’s exploding arrow had woken up the people who’d been sleeping, but Crave’s people already had everyone under the tip of their sword, arrow, or spear.

It was clear that if anyone moved, they’d die.

Tears streamed down Eduardo’s face as he slowly raised his arms in surrender. He and Scrubz had been close, and Nacho was struck by how influential the man had been, even if they hadn’t seen eye-to-eye during their time together. Crave wiped his sword off on Scrubz’s body once more, kicked the dead man’s face, then slid the blade into a shaft of wood until it *clicked* and took on the appearance of a simple cane once more. He eyed the cook coolly and stated a simple fact. “Nacho, I’m going to kill you. Don’t take it personally; you killed my people first.”

“Your taste in minions sucks, and they needed to die.” Reuben tried to get up, but Rizzo knocked off his leather helm, grabbed him by his hair, and placed a dagger to his throat.

The killer whispered almost soothingly, “Easy, friend. We want the Ivory Talon, and we want your boss. If you don’t fight, you’ll get through this. Otherwise, I’m going to have my buddy Battalion paint the floor with your girlfriend’s brain.”

Brie had struggled to her feet, but the Greatmace guy kicked her back down. Nacho could see that the Berserker must’ve used up every one of her Hunger Points to take out Hana Banana, because she wasn’t Defensive Whirling or Combat Dashing to get away from the mountainous brute.

Even though he hated the outcome, Nacho had to admit to himself that he was impressed. Crave must’ve waited incredibly patiently before deciding to strike. The cook slowly replaced his Skillet of Turtling on his back and sheathed his cleaver with a flourish. He picked up the last of the eggs and started to peel it, as though what was happening didn’t bother him one whit. “Howdy, Dick Crave. Can I finish cooking lunch before you kill me? Just about done over here.”

“Oh no you aren’t. Cook fifty of those eggs. I’ll eat them all. There’s a bonus offer, right?” Crave strolled over and grabbed the dead Hana Banana, trying to drag the monster closer to the campfire but failing. The beast easily weighed over a ton. After a couple of tugs, the Guild Master shrugged and dropped the wing, turning his attention back to Nacho.

There was no Health or Mana coming back to them: they were still officially in Active Combat with Crave and his Final Victory guild. Nacho cursed lightly at the fact that the Patrons weren’t going to go easy on them. He kept his expression blank as the rival Guild Master used an overhead chop of a fallen sword to cut off the Hana Banana’s white claw. The albino limb wasn’t the only thing that fell from the Boss, though Nacho was the only one to notice—everyone else was busy reading the message that had been broadcast to every person on the Starter World.

Dragon Spear Update!

Hello, Players! Richard Crave, of the Final Victory Guild, has found the Ivory Talon! He’s come a long way, and he just might be taking down two other guilds at the same time. We’ll keep the AKC posted! As for you, Mr. Nibbles, you may want to consider moving slightly faster, if that’s something that interests you! You and the Walking Freds are going to miss out on all the Dragon Spear fun, sir!

Nacho had heard of the Walking Freds during the Probability Vision, but he’d been fairly certain they were just Juxtaposition gossip. If this ‘Nibbles’ was real, it was almost guaranteed that he was another highly concerning threat. Especially if the Patrons were calling him ‘Mister’ and ‘sir’, instead of some throwaway insulting title. He had never heard them sound respectful to a person, and it was downright chilling.

Crave held the Ivory Talon aloft and let the cheers of his guild wash over him. “Looks like we got the key to our futures!”

Nacho wasn’t feeling too great at that moment, what with his impending murder looming over his head. Crave had really put a damper on his day. The cook bent and rolled his freshly peeled egg in the butter, salt, and pepper mixture, then stood tall. “I’ll need fifty eggs, Richard. You need me to process out the Putrid Mana, so you can’t kill me just yet. Perhaps we use this time to talk, and maybe set some terms?”

The entire time he addressed the Assassin, he made sure to keep his eyes off the monster drop. Crave pointed at one of the booths that hadn’t been destroyed or burned. “Cutthroat Charlie, Ranger Jim, go collect the smallest eggs you can find. The Patrons didn’t say it had to be chicken eggs.”

“Oh no. There goes my master plan,” Nacho stated dryly as he held up the egg.

“That a fact?” Crave walked over to him, knuckles white from the death grip he had on his sword cane. “You have some kind of ‘master plan’, Doritos? You going to egg salad us to death? You gonna devil my eggs?”

That made Nacho chuckle in mild appreciation. “I must seem pretty odd. All of your warriors are here, surrounding us, threatening us—me, I should say. Have you thought about what happens if you kill me, Crave? The other Chips aren’t going to be happy. Shouldn’t you be offering a merger? We’re close to a thousand members, and that juicy bonus. How many are you up to? Not a thousand, I’m betting.”

“None of your business.” Crave took the egg from Nacho’s hand. “This is magic food, right?”

“Right you are. Chock full of Cooking Magic. You wouldn’t want to spoil your appetite; you have fifty eggs to eat, right?” Nacho glanced up and met Reuben’s eyes. His gaze shifted to Brie, who was up on one knee, leaning on her lacrosse stick. Blood dripped off the side of her face and onto the floor. Before she could fight again, she’d need healing and food.

Kala sat on her Death Knight helmet to Nacho’s right, holding her head in her hands and looking completely defeated. One of Crave’s Mind Players stood behind her with red energy sparkling off his hand. Nacho could tell that the man was hoping Kala would make a move so he could implant spellfire into her skull. Myron wasn’t in any better of a situation, as Red Suzy Blacke had an arrow nocked and ready to sizzle through his head.

Crave smashed the peeled egg into Nacho’s hand, leaving behind greasy, seasoned paste. “Here’s the deal, tortilla breath. After what you did, there’s no way I can trust you. You’re powerful, though the new armor makes you look ridiculous. How can a Guild Master be respected when he looks like a garage sale?”

“I’m a Guild Leader, not a Master. Hear that, enemy guild? There was always the option not to be controlled by your Master, but he would have needed to trust that you wouldn’t betray him. Hard for a betrayer to trust other people.” Nacho slurped down the egg mush from his hand, and his bonus Mana points were gone. He added the new egg Cooking Magic to Fitness and felt his body grow dense with coiled power. “Crave, I gotta ask… is it the happy oven mitt gloves? I didn’t get to choose the color, you know. The Patrons love that bright red and yellow. Are you part bull, and you just hate the red?”

Nacho knew they weren’t getting out of this without a fight, and it would be tricky at best. They’d all have to strike at the same time, and he only had one egg left, which had already been smeared with butter and seasoned before Crave had dropped in. He bent and picked it up from the garish Juxtaposition plate, holding the greasy food in his fingers. “I guess it doesn’t matter, Dick, though I’m pretty sure if you try to kill me, my friends and Kala are going to kill you right back. In fact, I would count on it.”

“Kala is a friend?” Crave’s eyes narrowed, and a tight smile crossed his lips. “Is she now?”

“Kala, we’re friends,” Nacho called to the Death Knight. “Tell him.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “I’ve hated you since the first time I met you. No, we’re not friends. You did save my life, so I owe you… something. It’s not nearly enough to make me go up against Crave, not even if he tries to kill you.”

“Not friends,” Crave affirmed as his grin turned wicked. Nacho hid his own smile; there was a glint in Kala’s eyes that told a different story. The fact that he’d saved her life meant a lot to her. More than that, it was the fact that Brie and Scrubz had been able to hit Hana Banana when she hadn’t… all thanks to his cooking. The ability to give people power went a long way when trying to make friends.

“Oh, hey! Any chance your guild knows you killed your wife in cold blood?” Nacho loudly questioned the Assassin in an almost conversational way. Crave had insisted he hadn’t, that she’d died five minutes into the Juxtaposition when they’d appeared off I-Seventy. But Nacho had heard the whole story from Crave himself, when he’d had a little too much Epic wine to drink. “Hard to build a guild based on trust when you’d do that to a person that was that close to you.”

All color drained out of the Final Victory Guild Master’s face, and he whipped his blade, ready to end Nacho in the next instant. “How d… how dare you? I would never have hurt Tiffany.”

“Fair, fair.” Nacho shrugged as though conceding the point. “I should have said ‘you didn’t even bother trying to save her’. That’s more accurate, anyway. When that monster pulled her into that cave… well, you just looked the other way. I just feel it’s important that your guild should know that about you, so they don’t make the mistake of trusting that you’d ever try to save anyone but yourself.”

“Shut your face-hole!” Red Suzy snarled. “We’ve all done things that we wished we didn’t have to do. If something like that actually did happen, Crave had his reasons!”

Nacho chuckled a little. “Yeah, his reasons were simple. Either he was afraid, or he didn’t like Tiffany very much. Divorce is free and easy these days, isn’t it? Just gotta… look the other way for a few seconds.”

Crave stepped close, towering over Nacho. His voice was a strangled whisper that barely reached the cook, “How do you know about Tiffany and the cave? How could you know?”

“You talk to your Patron… well, so do I. I know a lot about you, Dick. In another life, we would have been friends. All the way until you killed me.”

Crave grabbed him, and that was all the distraction Nacho needed to toss Brie the last egg with an underhand throw. She caught it and stuffed the whole thing into her mouth. At the same time, Reuben reached out with a glowing hand. That glow touched Brie, healing the wound on her head. The extra Health Points helped, and the egg would be a quarter portion, which would at least give her the ability to Defensive Whirl.

The Guild Master flung his cane sword forward in an attempt to drive the point into Nacho’s chest, but the Wok of Blocking easily turned the blow. The thin blade did drive into the cook’s side, which didn’t feel good… but between the armor and his Tier one bonus, the blade didn’t even break his skin.

A look of shock filled Crave’s face, but rage quickly took over as he snarled in Nacho’s face. “You’re going to die!”

“Maybe, Dick. But not today, and not by you.” Nacho grabbed the Assassin’s wrists and started to squeeze, earning a scream of pain as his nearly-forty points in Fitness—thanks to his food buffs—allowed him to practically powder the bones.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nacho saw Kala’s father throw himself at the Mind Player holding his daughter captive. Red Suzy Blacke turned and fired her arrow into the older man, generating an explosion of flame. Nacho winced even as he realized that he had just been handed a massive boon: the old dude wasn’t going to survive that, and Nacho wasn’t to blame. The cook had been the one to kill Kala’s father in the Probability Vision, which had eventually led to his own death. This time, things were playing out far differently.

Much more in his favor, as dark as that thought was.

Rizzo tried to cut Reuben’s throat, but an arrow sprouted from the killer’s back, one Nacho recognized. The cavalry had come in the form of their amazing teen archer decked out in his Robbin’ Hoodie armor. A purple spell grenade hit near where Brie and Battalion had faced off, and an instant later, a lacrosse ball exploded next to the skewered Rizzo and Reuben, knocking them both to the floor.

Abby popped up and slammed her staff into Crave’s head, sending the man staggering back, unable to use his hands.

“How?” was all Crave could sputter as he gaped at the cook in undiluted horror. In response, Nacho pulled off his skillet and smacked the Guild Master in the face, sending him tumbling rear-over-teakettle.

Damage Dealt: 33/46.

“I have an answer,” Nacho told the man that was near-death from the single hit, “but you’re not going to like it. Those eggs are really good. You should’ve had one.”

Kala leapt up with a scream, hacking her huge sword into Red Suzy with blind fury. It was far too late to save her father, but his murderer was right in front of her. Suzy might have been tough enough to survive one cut, but not two—but Kala didn’t get another chance to attack.

Everyone exploded into maximum violence, the room filling with complete pandemonium in an instant.

Nacho dropped his skillet and drew his knives, stepping forward with a sense of purpose. “Two swipes of my HungerCry blades will put an end to this.”

However, the Assassin was quick with his magical feather.

“Crave-!” Nacho’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he went down, fast asleep.