Multiversal Mercenary Chapter 4: Invading the Royale (Patreon)

Chapter 4: Invading the Royale

“I can’t believe you were gonna go into the Royale alone!” Paco exclaimed, glaring at his girlfriend.

Coyote bristled and tried to glare back, but he did not back down, and I was also giving her an unimpressed look, causing her shoulders to slump.

“I had it handled,” she muttered. I just snorted while Paco shook his head.

After the bartender had made a few calls, a taxi had arrived a little bit later with Paco all but leaping out towards her. As they continued their chat, I ushered Lucy into the recently vacated vehicle.

“You’ll be safe with Mrs. Kubota,” I assured her.

She just nodded weakly, eyes still glazed over, and I held back a sigh as I closed the door to the cab and let it take her to the Seamstresses Union in Touristville.

As it drove off, I turned to Coyote and Paco, who seemed to have finished their little chat with each other and were now watching me warily.

“Yo,” I said in greeting, like it was just another day.

“Yo,” Paco snorted back, shaking his head. “Thank you for saving my girl.”

“Didn’t save me,” Coyote grumbled.

“I did,” I replied. “Or your arm, at least.”

I pointed to her left arm. “Had you waltzed in there without a plan, they’d have caught ya and mangled your arm, feeding bits of it to the hellhounds he keeps. You know, the ones you spent money on buying zebra meat to try and get past ‘em?”

She grimaced and refused to look at me or Paco, the latter of which was giving her a very unimpressed stare.

“You forgot to pick up the zebra meat that you bought? A cornerstone of your whole plan?” he demanded incredulously.

“It wasn't in, yet!” she protested. “Murray said the delivery was late!”

“And waiting a few hours was too much work for you,” I drawled. As the dark-skinned woman puffed up in anger, I raised my hands.

“Alright, sorry, that was rude,” I said, even if it was the truth. “Let’s grab the meat now, and plan our trip into Stevie’s domain.”

Coyote nodded tersely, accepting the peace offering, and walked off towards

“So, who was that girl?” Paco asked as we headed to Murray’s exotic meat stall.

“She was supposed to be the Emerald City Ripper’s next victim,” I told him. “But Coyote helped me stop them.”

“Them?” he asked in surprise.

“Yeah, it was actually a pair,” Coyote admitted. “A troll and an elf. Both wearing medical clothes.”

“They are the ones responsible for the deaths, and a few others that have gone unreported,” I confirmed. “In fact, had they gotten Lucy, there’d be only one more victim for them to go after.”

“What? You serious?” Coyote asked.

“Yeah. The Emerald City Ripper isn’t a serial killer, they’re repo men, taking the organs that belonged to a certain Melinda Watts back,” I explained.

“Watts…? Hang on, like Sam?” Paco demanded, looking over at Coyote, who had a grim expression on her face.

“Yeah. Sam is dead. It won’t be long before the news spreads,” I said. “And I’m here to avenge him.”

“Why?” Coyote demanded. “Why are you trying to avenge him? Who the frag even are you?”

“Sam was, at one point, a friend and fellow Shadowrunner,” I replied, sighing softly. “He got out of the game, went back home to Seattle… haven’t seen him since. But as for why I am here? He had a deadman’s switch, set to contact me the moment he died.”

“He did mention that,” Coyote admitted when Paco gave me an incredulous look. “Always claimed he’d have a little angel come to avenge him if he was ever geeked. Kinda thought he was talking shit.”

“He does that a lot. But yeah, sometimes he’s telling the truth,” I chuckled. “And frankly… he doesn’t have anyone else to care, does he? Sam was a bastard, but even he deserved to have somebody be there for him in his final moments… or rather, somebody to care about who killed him.”

Both Coyote and Paco were silent after that. We got the meat from Murray’s, then made our way back to the apartment complex.

“How do you think we should do this?” Coyote asked as she stared hatefully at the building.

“Your job was to grab some jewels from Stevie J, right?” I asked, and she nodded, glancing at me suspiciously.

I just winked, and said, “Mage,” Before continuing. “Yeah, there are a couple ways to get up there. Going in the front door is dumb. He’ll have goons watching it. Plus, the BTL studio in the back needs to be protected.”

Coyote scowled deeper at the mention of the lab, and I just nodded. “Now, there’s two ways to the 50th floor. We either take the elevator, which would need a Decker to hack into so we wouldn’t be ambushed as soon as we stepped out of it, or we can sneak in the back way, using some old stairs.”

Walking up fifty flights sounded terrible, but so too did using the elevator. We’d be sitting ducks if we took it without precautions.

“Stairs it is,” she grunted, seeing the same problem I did.

“Great! The stairs lead to a back area, near the bastard’s office and the place he keeps his hellhounds and jail cells. He’s keeping the jewels in a leather bag inside of his bedroom, which has one of his three hellhounds guarding it. It will attack anyone who opens the doors who isn’t Stevie J, or somebody with zebra meat.”

I tapped my chin. “Best idea is to spring an ambush on them. Shouldn’t be more than ten people up there. We kill ‘em quick, and we can lure the hellhound out of the bedroom into another one. Oh, and then we loot the place to the ground on our way out.”

“I like the way you think,” Coyote chuckled darkly. Paco looked less eager for the plan, but nodded along anyways.

Royale Apartments. A massive apartment structure, fifty floors tall, and filled to the brim with poverty. Once, it might have been a respectable place, but that time was long gone due to neglect and mismanagement.

People didn’t so much ‘live’ here as ‘exist.’ They squatted, and paid ‘rent’ which was closer to a protection racket rather than anything else. Water and electricity were reserved for only those floors where Stevie “Evil Landlord” J and his goons lived.

Because it was such a shitshow it was easy to get inside. One of the back entrances had lost its door long ago, and only some wooden planks had been put up to bar entry. Removing them was easy.

Once inside, it took some time to get through the heaping piles of trash to reach the lobby where I knew the secret staircase was, but make it we did.

Some people were watching the entrance, and were likely some of Stevie’s informants. But because we came in through the back, their attention was focused away from us.

“Over here,” I told the duo, pointing to an empty vending machine propped up against a wall. “Paco, can you give me a hand?”

“Sure,” he replied, and together we shifted it to the side, revealing a hole in the wall. And, peering through the hole, we could see a set of stairs.

“Kinda small,” Coyote noted, eyeing the opening. “I could maybe squeeze through… maybe.”

“Nah, no need,” I replied, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ve got this.”

Through the hole, I could see flickers of mana that had coalesced into a lump of oozing power. A summoning site, where Shamans could conjure spirits from the environment.

Now, as a Mage, I technically shouldn’t be able to summon spirits, but that was just in game terms. Magic was magic, but without the knowledge or training needed to control one, it’d just be a rogue entity.

No, what I wanted was to borrow the lump of magical energy for a quick little spell, not wanting to waste my own energy on this. One quick Stench later, and the people living in the apartment next to the stairs came rushing out, gagging as the illusory smell hit them.

I’d purposely kept it from being full-powered, as I didn’t need people vomiting everywhere, but it was bad enough that even these slum dwellers didn’t want to be around it.

“Come on,” I said, dismissing the spell and walking through the now open doors that led towards the stairs seen through the hole.

“That was devious,” Coyote said, looking over her shoulder cautiously.

“I’ll turn the spell back on once we’re through. The smell will keep people from investigating, giving us some time to climb,” I told them.

“Smart,” Paco nodded, nervously tapping his baseball bat against his shoulder.

Coyote double-checked her gun before heading up the stairs. Paco quickly followed, and I brought up the rear by re-casting the Stench spell in the same spot. It’d linger, sustained by the gnarled clump of raw magic, but not for long. I estimated only an hour or so.

‘Plenty of time to do crime,’ I thought in amusement.

I waited for a moment, hoping that I’d hear the “Ding!” of an announcement, but was disappointed when nothing happened.

‘Damn, guess that wasn’t enough to get me some Karma, unlike in the games,’ I thought with a hint of annoyance. ‘Let’s see… System, show yourself.’

[Welcome to the Karma System!] a text box cheerfully informed me, appearing in front of my eyes as I thought that command. [Current Unspent Karma: 1.]

There were other things that popped up. This Karma System had options.

[STATS] showed me my stats as if I was a character in the Shadowrun games. Here, I could purchase upgrades to my existing stats, and make adjustments. I was actually a bit surprised by my stats.

[Gavin @%&!^? Lariat “Hotsauce”, Human, Mage?]

[STRENGTH 2 (Close Combat 1, Unarmed 1)

QUICKNESS 3 (Ranged Combat 3, Pistol 3, Dodge 2)

INTELLIGENCE 2 (4)

WILLPOWER 5 (Spellcasting 5)

CHARISMA 3

BODY 3 (2) (Basic Bitch Cyberarm)

ESSENCE 5^6?

SPELL SLOTS 6

Etiquette Street

Unspent Karma: 1

Current Nuyen: 1,150]

‘Not sure I like the implications of those glitches,’ I thought with a hint of worry.

As far as stats went… these were pretty dogwater. Not the worst, but for somebody who’d apparently been a Shadowrunner for most of his life? Yeah, Gavin had been running on insane amounts of luck to have gotten out alive with some of these numbers. Willpower was impressive for a self-taught street Mage, but that was about the one thing that stood out about him.

Though I didn’t have anything to compare it to. For all I knew, this was actually pretty good. After all, real life wasn’t like a game. People couldn’t get Karma from doing deeds and upgrade themselves. They had to work with what they had, and grow at glacial paces.

As for what else I had? There was an [INVENTORY] but that just told me about the stuff I was carrying on me. I could see the conditions of my gear, and read out little flavor text blurbs, but there was no extra-dimensional storage feature or weight reducing ability.

Then, there was [SHOP] which I hadn’t had a chance to inspect yet, but I suspected it was, well, basically an in-game shop. After that, one final option existed within the menu: [PLANESWALKER]. It was greyed out, though. Couldn’t do a thing with it.

‘I wish had more time to explore this ‘karma’ stuff, though,’ I thought, glancing at the floating textscreen in the corner of my eyes.

I could dismiss it with a thought, as I’d found out when I’d been standing guard over Lucy while waiting for Paco to arrive. I could also move it around, but nobody else could see it.

Since I hadn’t received any other Karma points yet, I had a feeling that these points would be rare. If I actually could increase my stats in the same way as the Shadowrun game system, I’d need a lot more than just a single point to do anything.

More exploration would have to be done later, though, as even though walking up fifty flights of stairs was a long, grueling slog, it didn’t leave enough time to investigate a whole new system. I’d need at least a few hours alone to really dig into this Karma System that had been given to me.

‘But if I can improve myself, then it will definitely be worth it,’ I thought with a hint of eagerness.

“Almost to the top,” Coyote announced, a bit of exhaustion in her tone, but it was overshadowed by excitement.

“Can we… take the elevator down when we’re done?” Paco all but begged.

“Yeah, yeah we can,” I replied, also a little out of breath.

“Shh!” Coyote hissed, holding up a hand.

There, we could see it! The number ‘50’ painted with peeling white paint over an old steel door.

Getting the door open needed a bit of elbow grease, and it opened with a grinding noise that had us all wince, but once opened, it revealed a long corridor lined with old boxes and crates that led down to the penthouse suite Stevie J had taken over.

Quietly, we all crept forward, slinking down towards the bastard. We reached the end of the hallway, where it led to a large, open space. Right in front was barricade of junk had been set up to form a sort of wall between a desk and computer set up furnished with neon lights. Stevie J’s ‘office.’

To the right of us, we could hear growling and snarling through the walls. The hellhounds kept just out of sight in the room next door, most likely. Past that, there was a bunch of junk piled up in front of the hallway.

Peeking around the corner with a piece of reflective metal, I could see Stevie J was sitting at his desk in a dirty armchair, speaking to somebody who had a leather jacket and way too many spikes and chains.

Stevie J was a rather unpleasant looking fellow, with his right eye replaced by a glowing red cyber-eye. A long scar marred his face, likely the reason why he had a cyber-eye in the first place. He wore glasses and looked as if he might have once been fit, but had let himself go slightly.

I could feel Coyote shifting beside me, and I raised a hand to stall her. Then, I counted down with my fingers, before flicking my hand out and casting Stench one more time.

I felt the mana within me churn and burn, and I winced. I was overdoing it. Too many castings of the same spell in a short time frame was apparently not that great.

But the spell did not backfire, thank whatever god or spirit was watching me, and soon both slumlord and henchman were doubled over, crying out as their noses were assaulted.

“Die!” Coyote screamed as she leapt out of cover and began firing her pistol at the two stunned thugs.

“Damn it,” I grunted, before gesturing at Paco. “Go! Do overwatch! Make sure to keep an eye for anyone coming!”

The Cutter nodded and crouched behind some wooden crates with his Uzi III, making sure nobody would flank us.

I jumped up and joined Coyote, who had downed Stevie’s henchman with a couple bullets to the chest and head, but not the main man himself, as he’d managed to dive behind his desk for cover. The sudden surge of adrenaline from being shot at had clearly allowed the man to overcome my illusion, and he’d grabbed an AK-47 and was firing wildly while screaming something incoherent.

The door to the hellhound room was still locked and shut, to my relief, and I could hear shouting further in the suite, so I joined Coyote in trying to shoot the guy.

“Bastard!” Stevie roared at me, a few stray rounds zinging past, but I raised Hercules and fired. My .44 Magnum rounds were more than enough to pierce through his desk, and two shots later Stevie was soon sprawled out, bleeding heavily.

As I reloaded, Coyote leapt over the desk to reach the dying man. She kicked the gun out of his hands before quickly putting a few rounds into his ugly mug. His head splattered into goo, and his cyber-eye rolled under the desk.

Unfortunately, before he died, it seemed as though Stevie wanted to spite us, as I heard an ominous “Click!” over by Paco.

Spinning around, I found that the door to the torture chamber had swung open, releasing two of the late slumlord’s ‘pets.’

Hellhounds. Wolf-like creatures that were the result of magic returning to existence. They were big, mean brutes with black coats, fiery red and glowing eyes, strong jaws and the ability to breath fire in some cases, as well as almost total immunity to flames and heat.

They also liked zebra meat, for some reason, but I didn’t have any, Coyote did. One of the monster’s eyes locked onto her after sniffing the air, and with a snarl charged forward, ignoring Paco completely and covering a dozen feet far too fast to be natural.

“JESUS!” I shouted, and Alt Fired directly into the hellhound’s face as it came at Coyote, who was standing beside me.

The beast’s entire head erupted in a shower of gore as four Magnum rounds tore through it, but that just meant the one right behind it had a clear shot at me, which it took, leaping up. I raised my cyber-arm up just in time for its teeth to sink into metal instead of my throat.

That wouldn’t keep it distracted for long, though, but I wasn’t able to reload Hercules with the hellhound on me.

“Little help?!” I screamed as the hellhound’s weight drove me to the ground.

“Busy over here!” Paco shouted as he was trying to keep the rest of the henchmen from storm through the doorway to reach us, but as soon as he ran out of ammo and had to reload, they’d charge us!

“Hold on!” Coyote shouted as she grabbed the AK.

She proved to have much better aim than I’d expected, as she shot the hellhound full of holes, missing me completely. I sagged in relief, only to scream like a girl as a wave of bullets came my way, only missing due to using the hellhound’s body as makeshift cover.

The men crowding around the doorway were trying to avenge their boss and were firing wildly at anything they could see, which had included me and the monster pinning me down. With it dead they didn’t see any reason to hold back, and I had to roll towards the makeshift barricade near Stevie’s office while dragging the bullet riddled corpse of the canine with me.

“Hey,” Coyote panted, slumped behind the wall with a anxious expression. “You hit?”

“No,” I replied. “It’s not my blood.”

“Good. Good. Uh, got any spells to clear them out?” Coyote asked.

“Do you?” I shot back.

“I have this grenade,” she replied, holding up the pineapple of death and making me flinch. “But if I throw it, they’ll just throw it back.”

“Surprised they haven’t started using grenades on us yet,” I muttered, glancing out before ducking back down as bullets pinged off the cover.

“Yeah. Let’s not wait for them to get smart,” she suggested. “So. Plan?”

“I have a spell that should distract them long enough for you to lob that at them,” I said after a moment. “Just don’t miss.”

She scoffed as me, and I decided to trust her throwing arm. Meanwhile, I looked inside and searched my soul for the second spell Gavin knew better than any other: Hot Potato.

This was the first time I was using this spell, and it seemed to work quite well. I flung out my hand in the vague direction of the doorway, and the orange-red mist that sprang up had Stevie J’s men (and one woman) scream in shock and drop their weapons as they suddenly seemed red hot in their hands!

Like with the brown cloud Stench had conjured, it seemed as though non-mages couldn’t see it, but the effect still worked as intended, and Coyote didn’t waste a second, shouting “DOWN!” before chucking her grenade at the doorway.

The explosive landed right in the midst of them and went off with a loud roar, and I ducked a little as shrapnel went pinging past.

Since the goons had been so clumped up, the blast had torn up and killed all but two. The mage, who’d been hanging back to sling Manabolts at Paco, and the troll, whose body was riddled with wounds, but still standing.

With a bellow of primal fury, the troll charged at us, ignoring the pain. Paco’s SMG wasn’t enough to stop the horned brute and he plowed through the wooden crates being used for cover, slamming into the Cutter and knocking him prone.

“PACO!” Coyote screamed, before firing the AK at the troll to try and distract it from stomping on her boyfriend’s head, and I quickly reloaded Hercules, the only thing we had capable of giving the behemoth pause.

“Oi, ugly! Over here!” I shouted, and hurled a Flashbolt at the troll when he turned towards me with a growl. The magical flashbang went off right in his eyes and he howled in pain, stumbling backwards away from Paco.

“Grab him!” I ordered Coyote, who didn’t need me telling her twice. She rushed over and dragged Paco away from the troll while I stood up from behind cover and carefully took aim.

Once I was sure they were out of the way, I Alt Fired at the troll as he staggered around, and the four bullets turned his chest into a shower of red gore. He then collapsed like a tree, thumping to the ground so hard the ground actually cracked.

‘Without HP, this makes things a lot easier,’ I thought with a bit of a weak chuckle to myself.

There was a frantic clicking and my gaze snapped up from the corpse of the troll to the final member of Stevie’s gang. He was a Mage based on the tattoos and spells he’d been flinging earlier, but seeing the troll get taken down, he’d lunged for the elevator and was desperately trying to escape the building before death came for him.

“I’ve got him!” Coyote growled, raising her AK-47, but only managed to fire a few shots before the gun clicked empty, and she swore and dropped the weapon, switching over to her pistol.

That momentary distraction was enough to buy the Mage just enough time to dive through the elevator doors when they opened, though, and a moment later they closed behind him as Coyote’s shots whizzed through empty air.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get him,” I admitted.

“Damn, wanted to clean the whole house out,” Coyote grunted in annoyance.

“I don’t think that was going to happen in the first place. How many people in the building work for him?” I asked. “Worst case scenario, he comes back with reinforcements.”

“Then we’d better grab what you came here for,” Paco said, standing back on his feet even as he clutched his ribs.

“You alright?” I asked as Coyote tsked.

“Taken worse hits,” he claimed.

I just nodded and turned to the bartender. “Still got the zebra meat?”

“Yup,” she confirmed.

“Great, let’s use it to lure the last hellhound into the cage area back here,” I suggested, pointing to the room where the two dead hellhounds from earlier had come from.

That earned a nod from both, and we approached Stevie’s personal quarters. Opening the door revealed a very agitated hellhound, and it nearly lunged at Coyote, but the fresh meat in her hands kept it from attacking.

Carefully, the bartender lured it back to the caged room like we planned, and when she threw the meat in, the hellhound darted in after it, and Paco slammed the cage door shut behind it.

“The jewels are in his room,” I told Coyote. “While you grab ‘em, Paco and I are gonna loot this place.”

She nodded and went in to look through Stevie’s stuff, while I shared a nod with the Cutter and got to work cleaning out the penthouse.

The guns from the gangers were taken, as well as the ammo. Extra weapons were being kept in a storeroom nearby, along with a bunch of grenades. We found medical supplies as well, some of which I gave to Paco for his wounds.

Cred-sticks were scrounged up, and I even located a couple of different magical objects. Some talismans for summoning spirits, and a street manual for the Heal spell. I was definitely going to get some use out of that if I could learn it.

Drugs and BTL chips were everywhere, as expected, but none of us wanted anything to do with ‘em. Cyberware was plentiful, though it was all low-level stuff. Still worse a couple hundred Nuyen if we could sell it. And I did snag Stevie’s cyber-eye from under the recliner.

[Stevie J’s Eye – R2 Flare Compensation (Uncommon)]

[Cybernetic Implant previously used by the slumlord Stevie J. While on the surface it appears to be a typical R2 Cybereye from Mitsuhama, it had been given illegal street modifications to have Flare Compensation, preventing blinding from sudden bright flashes of light.]

Perhaps the biggest gain of the night though was Stevie’s personal computer and commlink. ‘I bet a Decker can rip some interesting stuff off of here,’ I thought as I stuffed them into my backpack.

Coyote decided to keep a Remmington 990 shotgun for herself, and Paco went from an Uzi III to a Cavalier Gladius. Both distinct upgrades for them. No new weapons for me, sadly, as Hercules was simply too awesome to beat, but I did grab a cool leather duster coat that had Kevlar fibers sewn into it with a few ceramic panels for added defense.

All total, we were looking at four thousand extra Nuyen from the cred-sticks alone, and a lot more when we sold everything else.

“Well, I think we’re done here,” I said aloud as I adjusted the second backpack next to my first one. There had been so much loot, I’d had to grab a second bag just to carry it all!

“Yeah, got the jewels,” Coyote confirmed, holding up the leather bag and jiggling it.

“Great! Now, before we head back to the Seamstresses’ Union, there’s just one more question I have to ask.”

“And that is?” Paco inquired hesitantly.

“Who wants to help me bust up the BTL lab on the ground floor on our way out?” I asked, and Coyote’s grin turned vicious.

“I think we’re gonna get along just fine,” she purred, and I grinned back.

Partly because I now had an ally, partly because a text box had just appeared in front of my eyes.

[Congratulations! You prevented Carla “Coyote” Martinez from losing her arm! You have altered the destiny that was once writ in stone! +1 Karma!]

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Author's Note: Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Here's the first of two chapters for today!