I cannot roll down the window. It is manual.
Donut’s chair suddenly unhooked herself and an arm appeared. It grasped the handle and start quickly rolling it down.
“Thank you, Dorota!”
While all this happened, I finally figured out the messaging. We only had seconds. The way the mental typing worked was a little different, but it was actually easier than the old system.
Karl: Mordecai, quick. Is the garden still intact?
Mordecai: Who is this?
Donut: ANSWER HIM FAST.
Mordecai: It’s still there. All plants still alive.
Karl: Guys, forget about the damn transformations. Everyone who suddenly found themselves with multiple opponents, I have an idea, but I’m not gonna lie. This idea is fucked. Contingency three. Three!
Louis: Wait, who is this Karl-with-a-K guy?
Donut: THAT’S CARL. THE SYSTEM IS SPELLING HIS NAME WRONG BECAUSE HE’S A STUPID DOG NOW.
Thirty seconds. Ahead, the starting lights appeared. The giant cannon started to pop out of Dwight’s vine, but it stopped. I’d deliberately parked too close to him for it to fully deploy. The gun retracted, and I heard it pop out the other side.
Karl: Osvaldo, please. Please. We can all get through this. Please don’t force this.
Osvaldo: Go fuck yourself, Carl. I’m glad we worked together when we could, but it’s now too late.
Karl: Damnit, man. At least answer this. Did that Ysalte crystal protect against the Scolopendra attack?
Osvaldo: No.
Goddamnit. We were out of time.
Ten seconds.
Five seconds.
“Forgive me,” I said.
The light turned green, and in less than a minute, they were all dead.
We were, after all, the veterans of Faction Wars. We were hardened. We were survivors.
We were crawlers, and we weren’t going down without a fight.
No matter how strong these NPCs were, the only thing that had kept any of them alive up until this point was our attempts at minimizing crawler-on-crawler fights.
That was no longer an issue. Our backs were against the wall. We no longer cared about collateral damage. And we were fucking pissed.
We were crawlers, and they were not.
It wasn’t even close to resembling a fair fight.
For Dwight, it went exactly as planned. The light turned green, and Dr. Metcalf reacted. Dwight burst off the starting line, dragging his missile cart he would never get to launch.
His cannon fired directly into Bruna, whose shield was already activated.
Before Bruna was finished staggering from the blast, it was done. The hole punch did its job. The newly redesigned vine-killing potion balls did their job. The GPS-frying potion did its job.