Unexpected Guests - Interlude 4 - Shenanigans

“I’m sorry! I let my temper get the best of me, and I didn’t even manage to take even a single one of them down,” Chelsea cried, her mane of auburn hair flopping about. “I was so confident too!”

“It’s alright, you did your best,” I gently reassured the crying girl on the other side of the tablet. “I watched your match, you did an excellent job, considering the circumstances. With your strength, I thought you’d at least be able to push through that big bear and deal with some of their smaller team members.”

“And I did! It worked for a while!” Chelsea exclaimed, instantly cheering up. “I had no problem knocking the big bear around at the start, and I was even able to keep the girl at bay with my tail. I was just about to charge the fox when everything changed…”

I gently lifted the tablet sitting at my side, and stared at the footage I’d left on loop. The battle went exactly how I’d expected, with Chelsea matching the big bear blow by blow, right up until the end. Then, all of a sudden, the bear just started shrugging off absolutely everything that Chelsea could throw at it.

The most frightening part was once it caught her in a headlock, it didn’t move an inch. It wasn’t a slow improvement, and it didn’t look like anyone had cast a spell to help it, it was more like someone had just flipped a switch and decided the bear wasn’t going to move.

The worst part was I couldn’t think of a single spell, or effect, that would cause that change. The closest I could come up with was some sort of gravity magic, increasing its mass to help it shrug off Chelsea’s strikes. The thing was the bear wasn't just resisting her strength, it was straight up ignoring it, and without knowing HOW it achieved this feat, I’d have a hard time coming up with a counter.

“Helloooo… Talia, dungeon to Talia! Are you still there?” Chelsea asked.

“Oh, what? Yes, sorry. I was just thinking,” I replied, snapping up the communication slate. 

“Yeah, I figured. I really hope you got something useful out of that, because after a showing like that I know my mother is going to be all over me during practice. ‘How could you let someone overpower you? You’re a mighty Chimera! I guess you need more training, fifty laps!’” Chelsea said, mimicking her mother.

“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to Charlotte later, explain there were extraneous circumstances,” I told the girl. “You know, considering how fast you are at shapeshifting we should think about incorporating some form changes in your boss fight in the future. It’s a good way to throw your opponents off, and it might have let you escape that headlock.”

“I should have thought of that!” Chelsea exclaimed. “But I was so surprised. Who performs a headlock on a chimera?”

“Normally? No one. Even ogres aren’t that stupid, or suicidal. I guess that’s why it worked,” I muttered.

“So, tell me the truth, did you learn anything useful during my fight?” Chelsea asked.

“Yes, I did. There’s the anchoring ability, of course, but on top of that…” I reached for the tablet running the footage, and frowned. I swear I’d placed it right next to me, but it wasn’t there. I glanced around, thinking I may have dropped it when I noticed an fuzzy arachnid leg just peeking over the front of the stage.

Leaning forward I found George slowly creeping away, a tablet in his mandibles. 

“George! Bring that back!”

The oversized tarantula jumped, and instead of bringing the stolen tablet back he sprinted across the floor, climbed up the side of the wall, then disappeared behind the stage curtain.

Bella laughed at the Abyss Crusher’s antics.

“Did you put him up to this?” I asked the banshee.

“Maybe? I may have promised him a piece of jerky if he could pull it off. You should pay more attention to your surroundings when you’re planning,” my floating friend shot back.

“He better bring it back,” I muttered. “Otherwise he’s not getting dinner.”

“Talia?” the tablet on my lap chirped. 

“Sorry! George issues. I don’t actually need to see the footage to do a review, I’d just prefer it,” I explained. I took a moment to get my thoughts in order before continuing. “The team is extremely coordinated, almost impossibly so. Oh sure, the bear girl was yelling out orders, but when I was watching the footage I noticed that the bears moved before she finished shouting out commands. Maybe she has minor psychic powers, a localized hive mind and is just yelling to cover it up. Psychic powers would also explain why we haven’t seen her use any magic yet. Psychic and Magic are not compatible, and while the chances of not having magic is extremely low, the chances of not having either is next to zero. I would know.”

Chelsea nodded thoughtfully. “Then what about what happened at the end? She held him in place with psychic powers? Telekinesis?”

“It’s possible… I doubt it though,” I muttered.

“Well, how about… Hey! Stop pushing! I heard you, I just haven’t had a chance to ask yet. Fine! I’ll ask!” Chelsea exclaimed, talking to someone off screen. A second later she moved to the side and Bea stuck her head into the picture. 

“Did you see what they did to me and my girls?” the young Anthophilan girl demanded. “My entire squad whipped out in seconds. Seconds! What the heck was that?”

I glanced towards the side of the stage, and caught sight of George just peeking out of the corner of the curtain. As soon as he saw me looking he disappeared behind the curtain again.

“Yes, I saw,” I sighed. “I’d really like to take another look at them again but… They appeared to be using some sort of firearm against you. Now, I’ll admit it seems unlikely that’s what they were,” I said. “I’ve never even heard of a multishot rifle, never mind something capable of firing that quickly, but that’s what they looked like. Maybe they were some sort of odd shaped magic wand?”

“You don’t think they could have been some sort of Gremlin device?” Bea asked. “The gremlins have been known to create some crazy stuff before.”

“Honestly? I doubt it. If the gremlins had managed to develop anything close to that, we would have heard about it. The gremlins on staff would be bouncing off the walls trying to replicate the device down in the lab,” I explained. “Besides, did you see how much they were throwing those weapons around? If they were gremlin tech at least one of them would have exploded already.”

“Okay, that’s fair, I don’t know if I buy those weapons being some sort of magical device, they seemed far too mechanical for that,” Bea said, “but if they weren’t gremlin tech, where did they come from?”

“That’s a good question,” I muttered. 

When a hairy limb nudged my elbow I looked up, only to find George next to me. He was either getting extremely sneaky, or I really did have a problem with getting too focused on my research. I gently took the tablet from his mandibles, then he scrambled across the stage escaping like a cheeky puppy who was caught doing something bad. Based upon the amount of noise he made, it was almost certainly me overfocusing.

Quickly rewinding the feed I found Bea’s fight, and watched it again. It was fast, extremely fast. The bears wiped out the Anthophilans in seconds, expertly clearing the area. It almost looked like they were more comfortable with these weapons than the traditional ones they’d been using until this point. Why not use these weapons all the time if they were so powerful? Well, the answer to that was obvious, they were limited. It didn’t matter whether it was ammo or charges, they couldn’t use the strange weapons consistently.

Just when the fight ended I noticed the bear getting dragged away, and was reminded of something I meant to mention earlier.

“Did you leave the Alarunes out of your introduction, or by mistake Bea?” I asked.

“It was intentional… You said the bear girl didn’t seem to be familiar with the Manor, and I figured if I didn’t mention them they could perform an ambush later,” the girl explained, rubbing the back of her neck. “I didn’t realize they were close enough to strike.”

“I’m not going to criticize you,” I told her. “Quite the opposite. If you had mentioned the girls, they might not have been able to catch the team off guard, and take another bear out of the fight.”

“Well, for now,” Bella snorted. “They made it to the end of the wing, which means they get to bring one of their members back.”

“Better one down than zero,” I replied. “We’ve been struggling to get a win against this team, and we finally managed it. Brute force didn’t work well against them, hopefully magic will do better.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see…” Bella muttered.