CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Thirty

“At least I’m still useful over here.” Nacho was pulled back into Active Combat as he closed in on his friends and quadruple-chopped a beetle-headed chicken into pieces. He leapfrogged over a Lesser Hana and landed amidst his people, then pulled the lid off his pot helmet. Thanks to his Gauntlets of Oven Taming, he was able to lift out the eggs without suffering any steam or scalding burns on his hands. He yanked out the last egg just as an inferno of pink energy lit up the convention center and drew a massive amount of attention: Kristie’s Death Blossom.

Between Brie, Scrubz, Eduardo, and Reuben, they’d pushed the chicken monsters back far enough to allow an utterly spent Kristie to throw her blast radius in the middle of the cluckers. The result wiped out any wounded chickens, and wounded some more. Unfortunately, the eggs were still hatching, and the monsters were still growing.

Another wave of angry hybrid flesh was already racing toward them.

Reuben crouched down to see if he could help Nacho. “I sure could use some more Mana in my Mana Pool, but we can’t get out of Active Combat. Where did you run off to? Don’t do that again; we were worried!”

“I had to go buy upgrades to the HungerCry Knives.” Nacho was already peeling eggs, finding it nearly impossible, until a flash of inspiration hit and he started cracking them with his knife and sliding the blade between the shells and the whites. “In other news, Hana Banana’s a Tier two hen. She’s got the Ivory Talon, which we need, but she seems very… attached to it. In other news, both Kala and Crave are in the UnderFun.”

“Kala’s here? That’s crazy!” Reuben was directed back into the fight by Brie just as they heard the roar of Hana Banana from somewhere on the convention center floor. “What’s the difference between a Tier one and a Tier two in practical terms, Nacho?”

“Their Mana. If a person or monster hits Tier two, it creates an aura effect.” Nacho got the water boiling again, reminding himself just in time that buying wood to heat a self-boiling pot was a waste of credits, shaking his head at himself as he used a swath of Mana to process more eggs and add them to the water.

He slapped down red and yellow plastic Juxtaposition plates for everyone, then added Cooking Magic to his egg dish as he dipped one in soft butter and pressed it into salt and pepper. “You still need to hit for fifteen percent of their health, but the aura is a big deal. It almost always provides a specific effect, and in this case, it’s the reason the monsters are swarming. When the Boss gets near her eggs, they go from inert breakfast ingredients to full grown monsters in only a few… I think minutes, but if she’s really close, it only takes a few seconds.”

Even if it seemed like overkill to require a recipe, the game logic of the Juxtaposition required recipes for any kind of cooking, which made him even more grateful this one had been quick and easy. He swallowed the first egg whole. It was surprisingly flavorful and kinda perfect, for being a hardboiled egg. Nacho got the prompt to add the bonus to his stats and upped his Mental Energy by ninety-five percent—a huge change from his standard of upping his Fitness—giving himself a total of sixty-eight and a half Mana.

The System was prompt to reveal the results of consuming the egg itself.

Greetings, Player! Aren’t these eggs delicious? They were almost more chicken monsters that would’ve liked nothing more than to rip you apart. However, you’re still alive. Are you doing the fifty-egg challenge?

Yes / No

Nacho chose the sane ‘no’ option.

Booo. Fine. You’re no fun. Your Mental Energy is doubled, and you earn fifty credits. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day–normal eggs might not be brain food, but ours have been enhanced with Omega 300,000. That helps your adorable little human brain. Look on the sunny side up; you’re getting something nice out of this.

Nacho felt the power hit him, and his thoughts crystalized into perfect clarity. With the boost, he had a Mental Energy of seventy-eight and an expanded pool of one hundred and twenty-seven Mana Points. He’d never felt so mystic and powerful. Better yet, he didn’t have to worry about running out of Mana. He could imbue everything with his Cooking Magic, and his next dish would provide a nearly two hundred percent bonus. And if that wasn’t enough, he could also process as many eggs as he could collect. “Maybe we should do the fifty egg challenge.”

“Hard boiled eggs while we fight? Choking them down is going to be almost impossible.” Brie stated as she came dashing back in, spotting the plate waiting for her. She horked down three eggs, one after another, lubing them up with butter so they would slide down her throat. Hunger satiated and Fitness at a massive peak, she sped back into the battle.

Kristie rotated in next, pale and shaking—using her Death Blossom had drained her like nothing else. She managed to eat one egg. Being a Mind Player, it was all about Mana and Thirst for her, but this dish would also give her a surreal boost to her Mental Energy and Mana. “Oh, that’s the ticket. I’d used all but one of my mana points, and I just about passed out. Now I have a Mental Energy of fifty? That gave me a hundred and twenty-five points remaining in my Mana Pool! I am Kristie! Fear the mighty Warlock!”

She slammed a bottle of Tier one Juxta-Ade to help with her Thirst, then turned and casually threw another Death Blossom into an oncoming wave of buffalo chicken. That gave Scrubz and Eduardo enough of a break to swoop back and scarf down three eggs each, then Reuben—though he only ate one egg to send his Mana soaring. The Healer let out a sharp exhale and slapped Nacho on the arm. “Thank goodness for your Cooking Magic and this egghead magic. My brain has never liked your cooking more, Nacho.”

Reuben stretched out a hand and healed both Scrubz and Brie, restoring some much needed Health. Nacho processed another two dozen eggs, then stuck them into the boiling water. Using his Gauntlets of Oven Taming, he set the pot on the ground and started a timer, only taking a second to eat two more eggs just to get his Hunger Points up. Ingredient Processing and his Cooking Magic had drained him significantly, as both had a Metabolic cost per ingredient and per meal.

“Where’s Hana Banana?” he called around the last bit of egg white stuck to the roof of his mouth. “If she isn't here, she’s either sitting back and letting her chicks do all the work, or she’s trying to eviscerate either Crave or Kala.”

Nacho realized that might have been another reason why the Boss didn't seem overly powerful in combat; summoner-type monsters were typically less personally powerful. Instead—like himself— they were intended to boost their allies to greater heights.

A strident *clanking* filled the air, and to his discerning ears, it was the sound of a Death Knight running in full armor from a deadly enemy. Kala staggered into view, the metal protection on her shield arm utterly shredded. She fell to her knees, followed by her father and five of her followers, a relatively even mix of Body and Mind Players. Before long, Myron appeared out of the shadows, bleeding from a nasty head wound.

Nacho saw his timer was approaching completion, so he started plucking eggs out of the hot water and laying them out on a set of slightly-soggy comic books. It was time to address the elephant in the room, and he wasn’t thinking about the monsters they had already killed. “Get over here and grab a plate, Kala. I have eggs that’ll double your Mental Energy, as well as giving a boost for your Body Players if they want it. Increase your Fitness, and you just might be able to damage Hana Banana.”

“The giant chicken.” The Death Knight winced as she heaved herself to her feet. “The one with the white claw. We gotta beat that thing?”

“Nah, no white claw; booze is for suckers if you aren’t in a safe place,” Reuben called back, unable to pass up the opportunity.

“Welcome to the group, and do try to keep up. I’m sorry to need to inform you that we’ve decided on egg puns instead of alcohol jokes. Reuben, you need to put a credit in the ‘out of context puns’ jar.” Nacho kept his eyes peeled on the humans as he peeled eggs, all while the Healer groaned and played up his suffering and constant draining of funds.

“I don’t care what they say; I could use a drink.” Kala’s father joined the conversation with a wheeze. The older man, outfitted with a chainmail shirt and big steel plates on his boots, was leaning heavily on a nice spear, and he was clearly barely functional at the moment. Even though they were hesitant at first, Kala’s people started eating gratefully once she nodded her begrudging approval.

Nacho kept adding Cooking Magic to the eggs and didn’t spare any attention for the interlopers. He’d never had so much Mana before, and he found that it was rather nice. Once he’d finished the last of the cooked batch, he briefly turned his focus on Kala, eyeing her as though she were a scorpion poised to strike at any time. “We have to get Hana Banana out in the open. I was able to get her attention by either breaking her eggs on the ground or throwing them at her. We have to get Brie on her, and if she can’t hit the hen, we need to run the abyss away and try again in a few years.”

Kala peeled off her helmet, revealing hair that was a matted tangle of blood and sweat. “If we can retreat to the Green Room—it’s a reinforced room where understudies gather for plays and such—we could fight the chickens one at a time. There’s a single corridor there, and it would be an easier place to defend. Hey, Nacho… if I killed you, would I get your guild? Is that how it works?”

“You want it?” Nacho smiled a shark’s grin back at her. “Let me transfer some credits first. Then you can try to do all the killing you want.”

“Just trying to make conversation.” Kala slowly fell onto her back, and the puddle of blood forming around her sabatons clued Nacho in that she was hurt far worse than she had first let on. “You saved my life back there. With your, um, pan.”

“Reuben! Need a heal on aisle five,” Nacho shouted toward his friends, never once slowing down his hard-boiled egg production line. “We’ve got a bleeder!”

“I’ll get to it when I get to it. I’m a little busy!” the Healer shouted back. “Blood and cheese, baby!”

Nacho considered trying to make the Death Knight more comfortable but opted for  shrugging and grabbing another egg instead. “How did you guys get here?”

“We were basically following you. Very basically. Myron got captured by Crave, so then we followed Crave. We were sure he was following you, and we were right. Last we saw, he was fighting pigeons and bees, so we decided to leave him alone to have fun. When we saw your explosions, we followed you into here: a clear mistake. You guys are Tier one already, huh?”

“That’s right.” Nacho let everything else go unspoken. Kala and her people had made the wrong choice by following them into this horror show. “How many are you?”

“There were a dozen of us, but we lost half of them right off the bat. Giant chicken went through our group even before her creepy chicks found us.” Kala winced from the pain and the memory. “We have a couple hundred in our guild hall, and we didn’t think we’d need them all for this quest. We should’ve brought them.”

“No. If you had brought more Tier zeros, you’d have just been bringing along a larger group of burdens that you clearly have no way of protecting,” Nacho informed her succinctly, only stopping as she gasped and her eyelids fluttered. Kala obviously didn’t have long, and she probably had a nasty bleeding debuff. It was clear Reuben couldn’t get away from the fight without help, so the cook dropped his egg with a long-suffering grumble and rejoined combat. After he took Reuben’s place on the front line, the big guy nodded and dropped back to pass out Health like he was a candy-thrower in a parade. “I’m too nice to outsiders.”

Moments after the others were stable, Reuben returned and put his fist through the head of a wolf-chicken.

“I could use another egg!” Brie called out with a nervous chuckle in her voice. “I’m in danger.”

“Dry yoke and all?” Nacho couldn’t help but needle his favorite Berserker a bit as he sped back to the fire and scooped up a plate. “Kala, get your people to start smashing eggs, as many as you can, then start burning down the booths. We have to draw Hana Banana in so Brie can take her down.”

“You want us to fight… the eggs?” The old Kala was back, helmet in place and attitude right along with it. “I’m not going to break eggs while you people steal all the credits. No way!”

“Fine!” Nacho snorted a laugh. “You hold off the chickens, and we’ll break the eggs.”

“Kala, stop it.” Myron rushed over—clearly not being held captive by Crave—short sword and dagger dripping with fresh blood. “He’s right. We have to break the eggs. Anytime the big yellow chicken runs by, the eggs grow into monsters. But how are we going to do enough fast enough to get their attention-”

“Allow me to demonstrate my preferred method of killing eggs.” Nacho grabbed a stick from his fire and threw it end-over-end into a booth, the hay and shredded comic books igniting in an instant. “Demonstration is complete.”

As he went back to boiling eggs, he had to shake his head at the action. Here they were in an epic battle, and he was working on making the perfect hard-boiled snack. He thought back to the Evaluation Mall and all the trash talk the Patrons had done. “‘Being a cook will be so boring’, they said. ‘Oh, you’ll be stuck in the kitchen,’ they told me. Uh huh. Lies, abyssal lies!”

Nacho couldn’t keep the work up much longer: even with his monster bonuses and the eggs he was continuing to eat, he was running out of resources. He would be forced to get back into the thick of combat soon. Meanwhile, Kala was finally figuring things out. She took her father and Myron to go egg smashing, and the destruction brought Hana Banana right to them.

The Greater Gallinaceous Hana sped forward on her huge yellow and white claws, both deadly and ready to take his flesh off everyone’s bones. She was heading right for Nacho, and time seemed to slow in his mind. “Huh. The feet are the colors of the Juxtaposition. How did I not notice that until now?”

At that moment, Brie went Combat Dashing into the furiously squawking chicken and slammed her lacrosse mallet against its beak. A tremendous *crack* echoed through the cement hall, and the Hana Banana clucked the most agonized cluck there ever had been.

“She has four hundred and twenty-five Health!” Brie shouted with grim intent. “I can hit her, but this is going to be a rough fight. I need anyone that can help keep her distracted to do it.”

“Rough fight?” Reuben called while punching a goat-headed chicken. “Story of our lives. Who can hit for sixty-four damage?”

“I can!” Scrubz turned on a dime and launched himself at the chicken-headed chicken, planning to engage it in fisticuffs. Brie was hitting for a max damage of seventy-two, and Scrubz could do sixty-nine, which meant the pair should be able to bring the chicken monster down with around six strikes if they were able to keep it in position.

Nacho tossed Scrubz an egg, and the Warrior shoved the whole thing into his mouth. He managed to get it down—dry yoke and all—and sent a roundhouse kick into Hana Banana’s already cracked beak; causing the damage in the bony appendage to spread.

Hana Banana screamed and tried to rip Scrubz into shreds by hopping in the air and slashing her lethal talons toward his face in retaliation, but then Brie was there, spinning and protecting him with her Defensive Whirl. Mr. Lacrosse Stick swung around into the feathery chest, sending massive feathers puffing into the air as they were torn from the skin.

The giant chicken turned to run, but Brie wasn’t about to let that happen. She caught the yellow leg with an exploding ball, and the bird was unceremoniously tossed into a burning booth.

With Hana Banana pinned down, fewer chickens were spawning to attack the groups, but both guilds were still fighting for their lives. Kristie’s bracelets and the Firefly Potstickers provided the Brunch Force with a minimum of light, but shadows were still abundant.

Kala staggered and fell to her knees with a clatter, dropping onto her side. Myron let out what almost sounded like an annoyed grunt, then followed the trend—out like a light. A moment later, Kala’s father joined both his daughter and Myron on the floor.

Nacho didn’t know what was going on, his head only jerking up to look at them after they fell. Brie spun her stick and finished smashing Hana Banana’s beak off, and the severed bone went sliding across the floor as the chicken wailed in agony.

Scrubz danced up, spun on one foot, and landed his other foot into Hana Banana’s head, breaking her surprisingly-fragile neck. The chicken-headed chicken was finally dead, and in the following moments, the lesser Hana of various shapes, sizes, and biologies all fell to the floor, squawking piteously. Without their mistress’s life-enhancing presence, they seemed to have collectively lost the will to live.

Nacho held his skillet and cleaver ready as his eyes tried to find the villain in the shadows. “People dropping to the ground, asleep, mid-combat? On your guard! Watch for-”

Scrubz raised a steel fist and screamed his victory. “Yes! I finally see why you had me max out my class and roundhouse skill.”

Brie was breathing hard as she took off her helmet. “Me too, Scrubz.”

“Guys! Ambush!” Nacho shouted in warning. “Watch out for-"

Letting out a choked gasp, Scrubz gaped down at the slender blade of a black sword emerging from his chest. He weakly coughed up a thin stream of blood and smiled. “Still alive enough to transfer every credit I have to the Chips Guild. Ha. Joke’s on you…”

He slid to the floor as all of the gear that had been in his Storage Slots burst into existence around his body in a haphazard pile, revealing Richard Crave, who kicked the fresh corpse in irritation and wiped his sword—stained with Scrubz’s blood—on the dead man’s sleeve to clean it off.

“Does every person in your guild have to be a massive pain in the neck?”