Breaking the Rules Pt. 08

"You're not great at it either. Anyway, she got really embarrassed when she touched a bruise and hurt me. I don't need a translate spell for that body language."

"Screw you and your facts. By that logic, Dayo is a woman, because they've got the body to match."

"How do you figure?"

"By the logic of 'that's what I think it looks like on the surface'. You don't really know what she was thinking. Maybe she was just manipulating you, making you like her by pretending to be concerned about causing you pain. Maybe she just wanted to be likeable so you'd protect her if the men came back. You got beat up because of it and you still like her, I'd say it worked quite well."

"I see your point, but I'm pretty sure that's not why she did it. She's exuberant and playful, and I just don't see her putting that much effort into being likeable for safety's sake when she could just swim away."

"Now your thought process is better. Similarly, Dayo is not a woman as we think of one. But some people still mistake them for a 'she' because of oversimplification."

"So, what you're getting around to is, you identify as chaotic neutral, but you're really nice about it?"

"That's right, dammit."

"OK... sure," Nuru gave him a glance, then looked away with a secret smile.

"I'm serious! Only a chaotic alignment would help you skirt the fundamental Rules of our society."

"And taking your quest reward money, down to exact change, and leaving the rest of my stuff alone?"

"Just showing off. If I stole your stuff in the newbie zone, and you reported it, they'd eventually find me and make me give it back, and slap me with a harsh punishment. I had more to gain by helping you and getting in tight with Furaha's secret society."

"And what's stopping you from taking it all right this second?"

"Nothing. RAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUGH!"

Nuru's pack, drum, and purse all whisked away from his body and appeared in a pile to the side as Ace zipped back and forth around him.

"Very funny. Put it back, please."

"You put it back. I'm chaotic neutral, and I don't feel like it."

"But you're a nice guy."

"Apparently I have to prove my point. So there."

Nuru snorted, then collected his stuff. "So what do *you* think I should do about Katlego? Speaking as a thief, that is."

"Tactically? Let me handle the front line defense. It takes a thief to catch a thief, as they say. If she makes it through that, you're on your own."

"OK, but-"

"Ugggh, let me guess, you want to have a chance to talk to her before we get away."

"And then some."

"Your gonads are going to get you killed. I heard about the Zoo - you're just asking for trouble these days."

"I had to clear up a misunderstanding with the guy who sent me there. It took special measures."

"Oh, please. All you had to do was get through the night without causing a fuss. Instead you decided to show the guy who's got the best male posture. I know this may sound weird coming from one of D'shemil's Masters, but everything does not have to be a contest."

"Well... I was curious, too! Have you ever heard of vampires feeding on the willing?"

"You know I'm not very comfortable with those kinds of things. It's right there in my name. Ace, short for asexual."

"But that means you know about it. You know it's like a sexual thing."

"Come on, it's not like it's a secret."

"But that's not how the high society vampires like to portray it. It's a pleasure purely its own, or something like that."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Anyway, that's the high society vamps - there's others without such compunctions that are more than happy to make a salacious spectacle out of a willing donor. More than one's the man who's run to the other room at midnight to find he's been cuck'ed without his wife even getting naked."

"Heh. Getting some pointy head."

"Gross, dude."

"Oh, come on. It's not like he's actually-"

"No, but it's the visual association of those words. You say things like that and my brain automatically conjures the image. And the sounds."

"Sounds like a personal problem," Nuru said.

"Sounds to me like an insensitive friend, who should know better," Ace said.

"Sorry, you're right. In my defense, I am pacted with a succubus. She fills my head with stuff and it just spills over sometimes."

"Yeah, I know... Sooo, we should probably figure out our tactics. I'm an archery specialist; rope arrows and smoke portal anchors are my specialty."

"Smoke portal... anchors?"

"Yeah. Most people know not to get caught halfway through a smoke portal when it collapses. Some people don't know that the surface underneath can be reshaped, and take advantage of that. Imagine a building made of stone. Think you can't attach a rope to the ceiling, right? Wrong! And how handy that is, let me tell you."

"But isn't a smoke portal two-dimensional? That's what Furaha told me. There's no depth for a rope to get caught in whatever the portal's attached to. It just shears off, and-"

"Yes, normally, the ones I can use to travel with are. But two dimensions is enough to have different shapes and sizes. And calling it 'two-dimensional' really doesn't do it justice; it simply means there's no depth to it, but it doesn't mean that in a three-dimensional space, it can't bend and curve. Furaha's a travel agent, she of course would not appreciate the subtleties of the matter, biased as she is towards three-dimensional and higher structures. I can generate a different smoke portal that curves beneath a hard surface and- look, you ever have one of those wooden figurines with the arms that could move in all directions when you were a kid?"

"Yeah."

"That's called a ball joint, where the shoulder attaches. Now, the socket part of that joint, the part the ball fits into- smoke portals can leave that kind of shape behind when they close. And a thief that's really good can shoot or throw a well-timed rope with a knot or some hard object that will hold fast in that space, just like a ball joint."

"Well, that's cool I guess, but I can't imagine a single time I might have used such a thing."

"That's because you've never stopped to think about it. But imagine that the whole world is a canvas on which to paint, and your paintbrush is a rope arrow that sticks to anything, and it may start to make sense. That legendary armor I got you - I had to keep completely off the floor to reach it in the vault because of the mechanical traps and wards."

"You must be stronger than you look. You've got to be hanging with one hand, shooting another way, throwing ropes or something... holding up all your body weight with that one hand, swinging around and stuff."

"Now you're getting it, there's a lot of fancy maneuvers I can do with this. Anybody who thinks an asexual guy hasn't got balls, should try his nerve at slinging a rope to swing himself forward while timing it against throwing a smoke pellet, while being shot at by archers. And yes, STR is one of my high stats."

"OK, that's pretty impressive. I suppose there's a reason D'shemil made you a Master."

"It certainly helped. I'm not the only one that can do it, but there aren't many. It's considered a specialty build at my level."

"Why did you need a secret society to help you get ahead?"

"I'm good at the mechanics of it. But knowing when, and where, to use those skills is a whole different thing. D'shemil gave me the resources to hone it, but unless I'm joining a circus the need for those skills among the High Factions is not as high as you might think. They like the more direct, brute-force approach. It's been rather frustrating, as you can imagine. Mind you, many Masters such as myself end up partied with adventurers with a specialized tactical battle pattern, but in many cases I was put off by the attitudes and insensitivity of the other party members. Other times they just didn't appreciate what I brought to the table, since they didn't see what I had to go through when I'd have to break in someplace solo to get the door open for them. Happens to a lot of thieves, I hear. I was starting to wonder if I regretted my faction choice before you came along, thought I'd be stuck Level Sixteen forever since I'm not a conventional high DPS build that can just go raid all day like Dayo does."

"They've got quests, you know."

"Technically, but that basically amounts to 'collect more souls for the quartermaster' and that just means go kill stuff and search the corpse for all the usual loot plus its soul. Necromancers don't tend to play so well with others because of the stigma, so unless they're high ranked they don't get to have much fun."

"Do they bother you, as a High Factioner?"

Ace shrugged. "Not really. As with any magic or ability, there's a good way and a bad way to use it. Dayo's one of the good ones, as far as I can tell. Somebody's got to collect those souls, anyway; leaving the fallen to mourn their death in the special tiny hell of their own ruined body is the real outrage. Paladins do collecting too, but somebody needs to balance their overreaches sometimes by taking that moral high ground away. They don't do well at policing their own, in my experience, for certain categories of douchebaggery."

"OK, very interesting, but what does that say about our tactics?"

"Oh, yeah. Kinda got off on a tangent there. So, I'm not a standard combat kind of guy. I can sneak-shank an unwary goblin as well as the next thief, but dodging swords and arrows isn't really my strong point. I hate to say, in a straight up fight, I won't be there taking the hits with you, so cover your ass and don't get dead. What I like to do instead is set up ambushes, traps, apply debuffs, and generally play an attrition battle to whittle away an enemy's HP while staying out of danger. I may opportunistically drop something heavy on an enemy's head, but that's either luck or a lot of work up front and usually doesn't work out. So the best thing for you to do is help get an enemy separated out where I can get a nice sneak attack in, or keep their attention on you so I can get some backstabbity grapples on them."

"Right. So as the squishy unarmed bard, I need to pull aggro so you can kill them faster than they can kill me."

"I will venture to say there are many fights not worth taking on with that paradigm in effect. Default choice should probably be, 'run for your life.' I know it sounds shameful, but how stupid are you going to feel if you're just sitting there in your broken corpse thinking 'dammit, I should have just run, I'd still be alive right now'?"

"Yeah... how about, I just talk them to death instead. No weapons, no blood."

"If you can pull it off, hey, go for it. Same principle applies, split one off from the group and I'll take them out."

"OK, but I'll give you a signal if I want you to keep them alive or unhurt. Let's say, hold up an open palm and fingers tight together. If I need to change my mind, or signal that we are attacking for some reason, I'll hold up a fist. Open palm with spread fingers means nothing."

"Good idea. So now that that's out of the way, let me introduce you to my primary defensive strategy."

Ace vanished.

"Hey- where'd- oh. OK, I get it. You can come out now. Ace? Ace!?" Nuru said. He sighed. "Are you antisocial like Dayo? What am I supposed to do on long roads by myself? Talk to Tusa?"

"No, I'm not," Ace said, at the elbow on the opposite side from where he'd been following along.

"Gah! Must you do that?"

"Yes. Look, I don't mind chit-chat on downtime. But when we're out adventuring, in anything resembling dangerous territory, I prefer to keep it strictly business, and talk as little as possible. It makes spot checks way better, and it hides the fact that I'm here at all if anyone wants to get the drop on us. I hear that might be useful for you."

"Bah. I hate it, but you're right. OK, I guess we continue like this until we get there. Fair warning, I have a tendency to practice my drumming when I get bored. Prepare to be subjected to the rhythm that never ends. Oh, also, I do this.!Kafa Mara Nauyi!"

Nuru took off running down the road, and invoked Tusa's oath. His Weightless Foot spell carried him for awhile, and then he dropped into cooldown and settled into a drumming pace as he walked it off. Tusa caught up to him.

"Path find to Diamond Metro. Keep me out of overhead visibility if practical, and show me the easy paths. And don't worry, I've got a friend Ace along. He's a thief and he's keeping a low profile, but don't be concerned if you smell him, he's a friend."

Tusa grunted in agreement, and they took off again as Weightless Foot cooled off and became available.

"Why do I feel like there's no way you do that running thing to Dayo?" Ace said from Nuru's right side again.

"To be fair, I generally do that when I'm alone with Tusa, but it seems like a good idea to keep people from being able to follow me easily," Nuru said. "Plus, it saves daylight. Finally, I also do...!Tasiri motsin zuciyarmu!"

He began doing his Musical Trance-enhanced paced drumming, remembered that Ace didn't walk with his exact stride, and modified the rhythm to be easier to follow. By lining up every fourth and third stride, even Tusa got in on it and they all but flew across the ground until Weightless Food expired, Nuru's MP drained and they had to slow for it to refill.

(Hey! My MP regen's a bit slow, you doing something?)

/As we discussed, I am building wards. I'm nibbling your MP a little bit at a time, based on your regen rate./

(So you're basically doubling your own regen rate by skimming off of mine.)

/But I left you a full bar./

(How do you know how much I've got? You can't see it any more.)

/No thanks to you. I've been experimenting in your sleep; I pull all your mana until I can't pull any more, and that's your full amount. Then I just wait longer and longer to let it refill, and pull again to see how much I can get. Honestly, it didn't take me very long to figure out your max and your replenish rate.)

(Smart. But you don't know if I'm using any during the day.)

/Correct. Just assume I'm pulling it from now on. Let me know if you need to refill and I'll ease up for awhile./

(That's like asking permission to use my own mana. It's a good thing I like you.)

/Of course you do. How much have you gotten laid since you met me?)

(Enough that I don't feel like going back and counting, anyway.)

/So get that judge-y tone out of your inside voice, mister./

(It's aimed at me. If I'm being honest about it, I've done this to myself. No regrets, though.)

/Oh look, I've got company. Good time to take a break. Hopefully I don't need any of your MP, but do me a favor and don't spend it yet./

Nuru listened intently, but didn't hear anything for awhile. Once his MP refilled, he checked in.

(All good now?)

/Oh yeah. This one expected my border wards to be weak because they're small and tried to just power through. Little did he know I had them stacked close together and he tripped a dozen of them inside a second. I'm going to have to use trigger wards linked to directional attacks more often./

(I thought you didn't know combat spells.)

/I don't, but wards are another matter. A demon without effective active defenses doesn't last long./

(Got a thrall now?)

/This one wasn't worth it. Takes a lot of MP to capture a soul, you know, and I've got to rebuild those wards now./

(So, just the kill EXP.)

/That, and a deposit to the soul bank. I can grow some horns if I get a few more./

(You... what? You can grow horns at will?)

/Succubi tend not to be ostentatious with our body mods; paints a target on our back, gets all the wrong kind of attention. But as I've explained before we grow skins with each of our additional names, and we can add things like armor and spike weapons to each one of them, though sadly they don't regrow from any damage as we regain health, they have to be rebuilt using more soul power. Also, we can grow our "true name skin" which includes our skeleton in physical size, but it doesn't really affect our stats at all. It's just a fitness indicator./

(I heard you can grow wings, too?)

/Wings are for archdemons only. They come in automatically, I'm told, just like archangels' do. Hopefully I'll find out soon. Keep getting me that sexy EXP, Nuru./