Breaking the Rules Pt. 11

Breaking the Rules takes place in an RPG universe, and is the sequel to Bending the Rules. To understand the characters and how the world works, please start from Part 1 of either series. Not based on any particular gaming franchise or storyline, but there may be guest appearances.

Notes on places, characters, and spells coming soon. See my profile for where those will appear.

Forgive me, I'm terrible with rhymes. Just be glad, there aren't any mimes.

Yet.

*****

Nuru woke slowly, not wanting to acknowledge what he would be facing that day: more travelling with Chibale. How could he look the man in the face, knowing that he'd taken advantage of a fallen adventurer, not only trapped in her body but having to watch him treat her like a piece of meat to be consumed and discarded, and presumably feeling at least some of that? Knowing the man might have done to same to fallen men, Nuru thought he might begin to appreciate the horror of it.

Furaha was pleasantly warm next to him on the bed. From hip to heel she was pressed against him, their legs tangled together, although he'd turned on his back and she was lying on her side facing away. He rolled over to drape an arm over her.

"Mmm... Nuru..." she said, grabbing him to hold in closer and wriggled into position in his arms.

"Good morning," he murmured in her ear.

"I don't want to get up. I just want to lie like this all day," she sighed.

"We can't though. I can't, at least."

"No, I can't either. Stupid boss. Stupid job. Stupid travel service."

She slipped loose and got up, putting some clothes on. "Listen, if you want to talk, I'm here."

"Thank you. Same to you."

"I have my therapist for that. But I appreciate the thought."

They stopped for a quick breakfast on the way to the library.

"So... do you confess all your fantasies to your therapist too?" Nuru nudged her with his elbow.

"No, why would I?" she glanced back under hooded eyes at him.

"Oh well, you know, if you ever need someone..." Nuru grinned.

"Ah. Just as a friend, right?" she smirked.

"However you want it, babe."

"I'll keep it in mind," she said lightly. "Dayo! Right on time. Early, even."

"Had trouble sleeping," the valkyrie said. "I'm eager to find whatever needs doing to make it so that Nuru doesn't have to keep going around with Chibale. I can't help but feel like it's my fault, since I introduced you to my faction."

"Nobody is blaming you for this, Dayo. You helped me get the levels that got me here in the first place," Nuru said.

"Not for this, no. But Onyekachi-"

Furaha held up a hand. "Let me see if I can help with this. As a fellow breast-endowed person, I get pressured to take responsibility for things that aren't my fault all the time. Just because a man says something, doesn't mean it's fair, or right."

Dayo sighed. "That's a hard truth to swallow, but it sounds correct. I've been saying things like that forever."

"My therapist has pointed out a number of similar inconsistencies in my thinking," Furaha said. "Therapy's good for everybody. You should try it; there's no psychosis required, contrary to popular belief."

"Maybe you're right. But I don't know when I would find the time," Dayo said.

"That's the time you need therapy the most, when you think you don't have time. Trust me, I procrastinated for months for the same reason."

"I... I'll think about it. Let me know next time they come by and I'll try to be here and talk about it with them."

"Next appointment is in about a week. I'll let you know when we nail down a time."

"OK."

"One more day, and Tusa along for the ride," Dayo said. "At least you won't be alone."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Furaha said. "What if he knows how good a lyena's nose is? Don't you think he'll suspect what you know?"

"Crap. You're right. I guess that idea's out," Nuru said. "Tusa doesn't like him anyway. I'll have to come up with something else."

"How about you pretend it was Ace that was supposed to come with you, but he's still not feeling well enough?" Dayo said.

"That could work," Nuru said. "He'd be the second faction for our party, too. I just need an excuse for him and I not to have partied together before, since I already told Chibale that was an arrangement we had."

"Just say he likes to take off and go on his own little treasure hunts by himself on a whim, and not worry about party agreement obligations. That sounds like something he'd do anyway," Furaha said.

"Pssh. Right? Thieves," Dayo said, rolling their eyes.

"People, I am standing right here," Ace said.

"I knew it!" Furaha said, swinging a rolled up wad of parchment at the sound of his voice.

"Ah! Hey! Watch the bandage. Oh, I was doing the sneak thing again, wasn't I?" Ace said, appearing with a sheepish grin. "I'm sorry, I keep forgetting I'm doing it."

"You're lucky my wards counted the number of people here and I figured it out in time to stop the alarm countdown," Furaha said. "It targets Sneak-Active people with immobilizing gel. Gets everywhere. You'd be cleaning your armor set for days, if not replacing it altogether. Stinks like crazy, too."

"I very much appreciate your discretion," Ace said.

"Some master you are," Dayo said. "Or, should I say, you're a master forgetter?"

"Ha ha, very funny," Ace said.

"Is that how you scored that Legendary armor?" Furaha said with a raised eyebrow. "You forgot that someone wanted you not to, and just took it?"

"Better not forget that the floor holds you up or you might fall through," Dayo added.

"Ugggh, why do you put up with this?" Ace said to Nuru.

"You wouldn't find it compelling," Nuru smirked at him.

"Oh please, I see you and Ekene playing all the time, yanking you into the water and holding you under," Furaha said.

"And you think I enjoy that!?" Ace exclaimed.

"Damn right you do! You come up laughing and smiling for an hour afterwards!" Furaha said. "Face it, you're a romantic at heart."

"I never said I wasn't, the romance is the whole point. I'm a romantic asexual. Some of us are aromantic asexuals, but I never said I was one of those," Ace said.

"So is there such a thing as an aromantic sexual?" Nuru said.

Everyone turned and just looked at him.

"...what?" Nuru blinked a couple times. "...aw, come on, not me!"

"Aren't you?" Furaha said with raised eyebrows.

"No! I could do the romance thing. I'm just really really horny. And very busy. And poor."

"Flowers are free, Nuru," Furaha said. "You could bring them anytime."

"Would you appreciate that, though? I mean, truly," Nuru said.

"Who knows, I might!"

"Well then, I... might... find you some. We'll see what the day brings," Nuru said.

"Just make sure you come back alive with them. I don't want to receive them just to put on your grave," Furaha said.

"I feel like that might spoil it for me too," Nuru said. "You know what, that vampire might qualify, to get back on the subject of my question. Only she had a different word for it: megasexual."

"That doesn't exclude romance," Ace said. "It just means that, before romantic feelings start creeping in, she has to connect with someone on a sexual level. Some people fall in love, and then have sex. Megasexuals have sex, then maybe fall in love."

"Gods, I love a man with a brain," Furaha said. "Too bad you're off the market."

"Hey, we can be friends as long as you don't clobber me with a sheaf of parchment," Ace said.

"How did you learn all that stuff?" Dayo said. "It took me forever to figure out 'non-binary gender' was a thing."

"Yeah, puberty was a very confusing time for me. I had to do a lot of research to figure out what I was, and what to call myself. Met some fine folks from Samba's Spectrum," Ace said, nodding his head in Furaha's direction, "and they knew the right way to point me for answers. I was lucky, I guess, at least in that way. Might have joined the Spectrum instead, if I'd known that before D'shemil accepted me."

"I'll be damned. Someone that actually *wants* to join us. Or would have," Furaha said. "Seems to me most of us never felt like we really had a choice."

"Life's a funny thing, eh? You'd better get going, Nuru," Ace said.

"Yeah... I suppose," Nuru grumbled. "You guys are just too much fun for your own good."

"For _your_ own good, anyway," Dayo grinned.

"That too. Ugh. Can I just kill this guy and be done?" Nuru said.

"I mean, sure, if you can murder a Level Thirty-Eight all by yourself," Dayo shrugged. "And not get caught, of course."

"Sigh. I probably couldn't, even as a Level Fifty. Well, take care you guys," Nuru said, turning to go.

"Dayo, hold him," Furaha ordered.

Dayo paused only a moment to glance at her, then grappled Nuru to a standstill.

"Ack, what gives?" Nuru said, squirming.

Furaha stepped forward. "You forgot something."

She reached up, grabbed his face, and kissed him, slow and gentle, and then more forcefully as he relaxed and returned it.

"There," she said, stepping back. "*now* you can go."

"Except that it's my turn," Dayo said, spinning him around to kiss him too.

"Whew! What else am I forgetting?" Nuru grinned after the valkyrie was satisfied.

"You tell me, you're the one with eidetic memory," Furaha taunted.

"Ooh, I know what went wrong- except, I never learned how to read your mind. It's not so much a question of remembering as it is learning what to do in the first place."

"Isn't that what the succubus is for?" Furaha said, then blushed. "She has the damndest knack for knowing things she shouldn't."

"Uh- yeah kinda, but she gets up late."

Dayo waved at him dismissively. "Figure it out, or you're going to keep getting in trouble!"

"Hey! Shouldn't I get a choice in the matter? I just had this big fight with a demon about that," Nuru huffed.

"Think carefully now," Furaha said. "Are you saying you *don't* want to kiss me?"

"I'm saying I should have the choice every time. What if I got punched and my face hurts? Or I still had parents, and one of them just died?"

"Shoot. That does work both ways," Furaha frowned. "Alright, you got us."

"But I don't hear you complaining this time!" Dayo said.

"Heck no, you don't. Anyway, gotta run. Catch you all on the lips later. Except you of course, Ace," Nuru said.

"Hmm? What?" Ace said, uncovering his ears and reappearing.

"I'm leaving. Rest up, I'm gonna need you tomorrow I think," Nuru said.

"Should be good to go by then," Ace said. "Resting it is!"

*****

"Ready to go?" Chibale said as Nuru approached.

"Yeah, I think so," he replied. "Do you guys have a Specter Seeker for me to travel with too?"

"We've got a few, but they're all out on assignment. They go out and find the best candidates for Elders and it takes awhile to find and bring them in. It's not as simple as regular adventure questing," Chibale said. "We'll see when any of them make it back, but until then I'm about it."

"And Dayo," Nuru reminded him.

"Yeah, sure, I guess," Chibale said dismissively. "She's just a valkyrie though, can't show you as much."

"So what do you think for today?" Nuru said, suppressing the urge to correct the pronoun. "What about these rituals you guys go off and do?"

"Ah, yes. Let's talk about bosses. Come with me."

Chibale led him back to the graveyard and summoned skeletons to ride again.

"I heard about that stunt with the re-ogre. Lucky shot, that. Had it not been for that lyena, I'm sure you'd all have been wormfood. So that's a little taste of it - that was Jabu's re-ogre, there to give the kiddies something to play with as a big group and feel accomplished. Those inclined might wonder where it came from, and start wanting to build one themselves, as a pet or a mount. The way it works is, you get a bunch of souls. Then, a spectersmith works them over very carefully, and infuses them into a suitable host body. The body takes the longest part of the preparation, because that's the part where you can infuse the bones with crystals of various kinds to buff the creature. So aside from straight levels, that's how you get the real raid bosses and whatnot. The megamonsters, if you like."

"So only Low Factions have boss class creatures? That doesn't sound right."

"Well, so, High Factions have their own mechanics. As I understand it, they largely try to make up for their monster shortage by creating enhanced equipment, and Holy Boons of various kinds. Righteous Fury does lots of damage for a short time - but it's spendy, and if you fail to eliminate your enemies, you've got to have enough MP left in the bar to either escape or finish them off. I'm no statistician, but from the analyses I've heard, a permabuffed undead will be more effective in the long run than an active ability that you've got to carefully manage, especially before your Proficiency grows. The way I figure it, base attack power is reliable. If a quick buff has an expiration and cooldown, all you've got to do is dodge long enough and then press the advantage. Little tricks to throw your opponent off will totally destroy a similar-level active skill user, if you don't flub your initiative at the beginning. Plus, if your monster was already dead, no big loss if he dies - you make your escape, lick your wounded pride, and go make a new one. It takes time and effort, but you don't have to wait eighteen years to start training a replacement."

"Are the High Factions really that foolish?"

"I'd say they are. But, they also have a numerical advantage - they get up to twice the new membership of Low Factions or something like that. So they start off thinking they're ahead, and that blinds them to the importance of the individual people they have. And they say *we* don't respect life - hah!"

"Where are we headed?"

"We're gonna do one of my favorite things. It's a little game I like to call 'ghoul tipping'."

"Sounds... dangerous."

"Not really. Less funny than goblins eating their own shit, but the light show is pretty impressive. Takes the heat off if paladins are nosing around, too."

"Well, don't keep me in suspense. You drag them out into the sun?"

"He gets it! With a few extra hands to do my bidding, I can play it any number of ways. Today's bonus challenge is to let you get the kill."

"They can't be easy to find."

"Oh, you get a feel for it after a while. Think like a ghoul. They're pretty simple creatures, you could compare them to high vamps much like how zombies are to us living folk. All base animal instinct."

"Look for the deepest, safest hole, is that it then?"

"Mostly, yeah. Sometimes I look for an interesting challenge. This one time, I commissioned a collapsible tower from a conjurer. I had to wait - make a few adjustments, make it look old and abandoned, just far enough from a city to make it seem like it was safe. And of course, I had to check back several times, cover my tracks so they wouldn't know I'd been there, to see when one went in. But finally I got a ghoul in there, pulled the support rods holding the walls together and toppled it right at noon. Boom, fawoosh! It was epic! That look on his face as he came bursting out and saw me right at the moment of ignition - priceless."

"You still got it?"

"I check it every morning, sure. But it's never worked since. There's a distinct smell when a vamp goes up that marks the area, takes months to go away, and that's only what you and I can smell. Cursed ones have a better nose than we do; I've never caught a second one there."

"Keeps it sporting at least, right?"

"Heh, yeah. You wanna talk about sporting; high-vamp tipping is pro-level. I may try it someday, but I'm just having too much fun with the ghouls. High vampires are especially tough; they stick together, have pretty advanced defenses, and not just doors that lock: wards, the whole bit. Imamu's Legion has got a dedicated vampire hunter squad, gods only know how they manage it. Some real diehards in that club too, I don't recommend them. Had one idiot try to stake me. You ever see a vampire stake?"

Nuru shook his head.

"Giant, barbed affairs, not the old wood ones like we hear about in the plays and such. Not meant to be removed from the flesh. Like a spearhead, but designed to detach from the haft, and has a rope or chain on it, good for dragging. I'm sure it works great, but I told that fool he'd better be prepared to swim with that heavy chain when I dragged his ass in the lake, next time he tried it. His bluff check was pretty good, he could probably tell I've got Swimmer's Lung and Slow Heartbeat for those nasty caves with the poison gas. He'd have been breathing mud long before I passed out."

"Was the sun still out?"

"It was dusk. I'd have to have been really desperate to risk catching a last-minute ray and getting torched."

"What did he think he was going to do, just hang you up all night?"

"Who knows. Not the brightest crayon in the box. He's the kind of guy you keep in the deep dungeon until you have a need for someone with his specific stat profile. When you've got a bounty expiring, your crew's short a man, and the suckhead's gone back to City of the Damned to wait it out, you keep him at the rear for that snag-and-drag getting the dead-or-unliving out of the house. But then you take over and put him back in his hole."

"Hmm. Is that city safe to go as an uncursed human?"

"It's a bit dicey. Spectrum territory, of course, but not their HQ. They've got guards and rules and such for the sake of appearances, out on the streets you'd be OK, but don't go alone anywhere private unless you've got a good safety guarantee."

"OK, I have a question. How do we know if I'm going to get kill EXP for this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, let's say your minions go in somewhere, tie up a ghoul, strap the rope to him, and put it in my hand. You could argue that they're the ones that killed him, knowing I'm gonna pull on it and he's gonna come out into the sun, they did the hard work and took all the risk. You know, like if you've got a hole full of hungry wolverines and you shove somebody in there - did you kill them, or did the wolverines?"

"That's a hot topic, seems to change every time there's an Expansion, if not even more often than that. Current wisdom is, you do the last active motion that does the damage, you're the one getting the kill EXP. So your example with the wolverines, the wolverines killed him, because they bit and clawed him to death, and you get at most a kill assist amount of EXP based on how much damage you did getting him in there. But if it was a hole full of inanimate spikes, and all you did was sneak up and shove him in and jump on his body to make sure he got nice and impaled, then you killed him even if it's his own hole and spikes he just spent a month building. Make sense?"

"So I'll get the EXP as long as I'm the one opening the shutter, or dragging the body out into the sun."

"Exactly. I heard some guy several Expansions ago went around poisoning old people and claiming a bunch of EXP when they inevitably died of other natural causes, because they died five minutes faster than they would have or something. Made a lot of people upset; they were higher-level of course and so it was a ridiculous payoff. Not what is intended in the Rules."

"And a pretty dick move," Nuru said.

"I kinda get it. If he hadn't been the one to do it, somebody else would have before long. 'Might as well be me getting the EXP for it.' And they were dying anyway, right? What's five minutes off a hundred years?"

Nuru blinked, searching for something to say to that. "No opportunity for it now, though."

"True, plus this is way more entertaining. Old people don't catch fire in the sun without help, and that would be crossing a line. So, I'll let you start us off. Where do you think a ghoul might be hiding?"